


The Trees Have Seen You Savage

by BamSara



Series: Cryptids, Emotions And The Possible End Of The World [1]
Category: Invader Zim
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bad Jokes all around, Cryptid Hunting, Dib is an idiot, Eye Trauma, Feral Zim, Fighting, Ghouls, Gore, Hospitalization, Humor, M/M, Major Character Injury, Minor Character Death, Pre-Slash, Protective Zim, Rated For Violence, Shenanigans, Theres gonna be fluff in it I swear lmao, Zim is also an idiot, no beta we post and die, they are both idiots, zadf/r
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:20:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21688990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BamSara/pseuds/BamSara
Summary: Dib finds Zim following him out on one of his cryptic hunting investigations, and the two of them find something that's way in over their heads. Shenanigans ensure. Someone is threatening to make someone else eat a slug, someone gets lured away into the woods, and oh, Dib gets shish-kabobed.
Relationships: Dib & Gaz (Invader Zim), Dib/Zim (Invader Zim)
Series: Cryptids, Emotions And The Possible End Of The World [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1611253
Comments: 146
Kudos: 1991





	1. Ghoulish Behavior

**Author's Note:**

> "Ghouls who are well-fed on human flesh are indistinguishable from normal humans. The longer a ghoul goes without feeding, the less human it looks. A ghoul in the later stages of starvation will be extremely thin and pale, with veins clearly visible through the skin, and will have long, claw-like nails."  
> \- Cryptidz.Fandom Wiki
> 
> NOTE: be aware that this story is going to contain some pretty detailed violence and descriptions of gore. It's not really in the first chapter, but the second chapter will be full of it. Both characters are in mid/late high school age range. Could be interpreted as Zadf or Zadr, but leans more towards the latter.
> 
> Also, title is subject to change, because I change my mind a lot ;)

The location wasn’t difficult to find, if not a bit odd. The locals looked at him weird when he asked questions and shook their heads at the gear strapped to his back, mummering at the sight of his camera. Pretty easy to ignore the insults, harder to ignore the worried glances they’d send each other when he mentioned the reason for being there. Still, the gas station attendant was pretty helpful in pointing him in the right direction, and Dib found himself at the treeline of a forest that probably stretched for a hundred miles.

(Now that he thinks of it, he could have just told him he was going hiking, but oh well.)

The forest’s trees were tall, taller than the ones back at home, the kind you could climb up for an hour and still not reach the top. It’s the middle of the day but the ground floor was cooler and dim, all the sunlight having been blocked out by the leaves above. It’s eerie as he walks further into the woods, a strangely fitting setting. Summer is turning into Fall, so while most of the canopy of leaves were green, oranges and red dot the foiliage, some of which cover the ground already. A chill wind rushes by and Dib is suddenly thankful he decided to pair his tench coat with a blue hoodie underneath.

The teenager adjusts the strap on his backpack, pulling out a small, rectangular device. The smallest engraving of a Swollen eyeball symbol sits on the side, it’s power whiring to life with the click of a button. A shrill beep comes from it, interrupting the woodsy scenery as Dib raises it into the air and hovers it around. After a moment, he brings it back down again and frowns. “Huh. No signal.”

Whatever. He didn’t need a GPS anyway. As long as his camera worked and he had rations in his bag, then he’ll figure out the way back eventually. He stuffs the object back inside the backpack, a thought coming to mind to maybe grab one of those granola bars just to munch on when he hears the smallest, distinct noise of something scraping against tree bark.

Dib freezes. Body going still, his head swivels the area, legs locked to run if need be. Thoughts of mountain lions and bears and other wild animals come to mind, as well as fearful images of the supernatural rumored to be in the area, but his suspicions of such creatures die with the sound of metal clinking just barely audible enough to reach his ears. He gives the clearing a look around. Nothing around him, nothing at least he can see from where he’s standing.

The boy lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. Whatever. He was probably hearing things-

A scutter. A breeze that sounds too suspiciously like something moving through the trees, and quickly while at it. The paranormal investigator feels his body go tense, neck craning upwards into the leaves. Nothing there, nothing but the sting of his eyes as a sun-ray breaks through and shines through his glasses. He hisses, stepping into the shade. Whatever is following retreats the same time he does, avoiding the spots where the light shines the brightest and sticking to the shadows. There's a particular sound, like stabbing bark, then it's quiet again.

A pause, and Dib resists a sigh. “Gee, its a good thing I’m all alone out here. This would be a great time to go over my paranormal findings!”

Nothing, just silence.

He sets his bag down on the ground in a very dramatic fashion, faking rummaging through as if searching for something. “Yep! Super alone! A perfect time to go over all my many photos. Oh, look. Bigfoot, The Jersey devil!” He makes sure to be extra loud, foolishness be damned. “Man, I’m a pretty good photographer.”

There’s the faintest of a wind running through the trees, (or perhaps someone creeping closer) when Dib pulls out something flat and paper-like, partially obscured by it’s position in the bag, but he nods his head proudly at it. “Aha! My favorite photo of my favorite alien-!”

A rapid blur of green skin and metal limbs lunges from the treeline and Dib barely steps out of the way in time before the paper is ripped from his hands, the attacker skidding to a stop a few feet away, face twisted up and teeth baring in victory as he gathers balance. The alien’s Pak legs retracting as he holds up the paper for show, waving it aggressively as Dib stumbles back to his feet.

Zim thrusts the ‘photo’ forward. “HA! Foolish, dirt-worm. I have your precious photo and-” A pause, purple contacts drift from the human to the paper in question and he gawks “Hey! This isn’t a photo of the almighty Zim at all! This is a gas station receipt!”

Dib slings his bag over his shoulder, letting out a huff of air. “You followed me here!”

The alien pays the comment no mind. “You lied! You dare lie about having a photo of ZIM?!”

“You followed me here, you freak! I should have known!” He points an accusatory finger in the alien’s direction and the creature snarls at him for it. “What is your problem?”

“Me? You’re the one sneaking photos of people, you disgusting cretin!” He’s tearing the receipt up into little piece with his teeth in a boat of anger, so his words come out wet and slightly gibberish. “You tricked Zim!”

“You _followed_ me!” He repeats.

Zim spits out the remainder of the paper and snorts. “I didn’t follow you. I was simply…in the area.” He waves a hand nonchalant-like, as if to appear casual again.

Dib’s frowns deepens. “We’re no where near home.”

“So? I’m scouting out a spot for my next doom-machine.” He curls his fingers into a fist, shaking them at the mention. “Yes, somewhere inconspicuous. Like here. In this town. In this place. Yes.”

“Oh, gee.” Dib’s resists the urge to roll his eyes and ultimately fails. “And I guess it’s just a coincidence that I just so happen to be here, huh?”

Zim nods. “Yes! An unfortunate coincidence, as I would have preferred not to gaze upon your horrendous, gigantic head for a day at least. Tallest only knows how long I can stand looking at you in all your digesting, sweaty hairy glory. Your absolutely huge, horrific, ugly head. With all your skin. And hair. And stinky-smell.” A pause, the boy opens his mouth before being cut off again. “Oh! And your stupid glasses. Yes, your eyeballs are so inferior they don’t even par up to the other humans on this pitiful planet. What a shame. Disgusting.”

Dib blinks once, unamused.

“So.” Zim finds a random tree and leans on it. “Whatcha doin?”

He doesn’t know why he bothers to give the alien an answer, but it comes out in an exasperated sigh anyways. Dib spins on his heel, turning away and walking further into the forest. “I’m ghoul hunting.”

“Goo-hunting?” He hears the alien repeat. The sound of leaves crunching behind him tells him he’s being followed again, only this time the alien doesn’t care if the teenager notices or not. “I made a goo once. One of my best inventions at the time. Should of been there.”

Dib doesn’t stop his walking, but a frown deepens in his face. “Is there any particular reason you’ve decided to annoy me today? As far as I’m aware it’s-” He pauses, running dates over in his head to double check before continuing. “Three days too early before your next big plan on taking over the world.”

“Silence, worm. Zim does not need to disclose his reasoning to you.”The alien walks in stride, pride in his stance. He’s wearing his normal Invader uniform, Dib notes, not a change since they were kids, except now the Invader has thrown a hoodie over it. It’s dark purple and unzipped, and looks a little bit too familiar and worn to be brand new. Dib squints at the realization but doesn’t say anything.

Still, he’s a little annoyed. “If you wanted to tag along, you could have just asked.”

Zim’s hands fold behind his back and walks with confidence, dampened only when he nearly trips over a rock and hastens to straight himself back out again, acting as if it never happened. “Zim knows you well enough that you would have never agreed.”

He cannot stop the smirk rising to his face. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“Eugh, I hate when you do that.” The alien gets closer, leaves crunching underneath their feet as he leans towards Dib’s face, a sneer on his own. “That gross, teeth-mouth thing.”

Dib rolls his eyes. “It’s called smiling. You know what it is.”

“I know what it is, Dib-smelly. I just don’t like it on you.”

Dib’s face falls back into a frown, but his bottom lip sticks out in a pout and his brows furrow together as he sends the alien a disgruntled look. Immediately Zim’s face brightens, the smallest of a smirk at the corner of his mouth as he chuckles at the sight. “ _That’s_ much better.”

The teenager tries to kick him. His foot misses and nearly drops into a chipmunk hole instead. He mutters under his breath as Zim laughs at him. “Fuck off. I’m trying to do some paranormal investigating here and you’re ruining my focus.”

“I will not do the off of fucking!” Zim declares, raising a fist and shaking it to emphasis his point. Dib face palm as the alien’s voice echos through the empty woods. “If my presence here annoys you Dib, then _good_. It should. Consider it payback for all the times you’ve followed me on my missions to assault me with unwarranted attention and questions.” He snaps out that last part. “Zim has decided to return the favor.”

Dib reaches behind him to rummage in one of his backpacks pockets. “I think I have some bug spray somewhere.”

A three-clawed hand reaches out and slaps it away, Zim hissing at the threat. “You will not be rid of me!”

The teen squints at him, but relents. I mean, as long as the alien wasn’t trying to sabotage his work (though, he’s pretty sure Zim will take up the opportunity as soon as it presents itself) he could work with this, just ignore him for the time being. Maybe if he’s lucky, the alien will let something about his culture slip in the midst of his bragging and annoyances. Worst case scenario, he goes home empty handed and with a new headache.

“Fine.” Dib takes a moment to pause in a clearing, pulling out a small, hand-held camera. He sees Zim tense at the sight of it and inwardly laughs because of it. The alien doesn’t immediately rip it from his hands and smash it though, so kudos for that. “Just don’t get in the way, and, I don’t know, try to be quiet for once? I don’t want you scaring off the ghoul with that annoying voice of yours.”

“My voice isn’t annoying.” He tips his chin upwards with pride. “Zim’s voice is very sexy.”

Dib snorts. “Oh my god. I think I’m going to throw up.”

“Keep your disgusting stomach acid germs away from me and choke on it.” Zim watches him turn the camera on, baring his teeth when the teen raises the camera in his direction. Zim’s face appears on the screen, all hostility and annoyance, but the alien is decked out in his disguise and looks no more irritated than someone who realized their picture was being taken without permission, so Dib points it away with a huff and focuses it on front of him.

He keeps walking, and the alien follows beside them. They travel in silence for a minute or two, Dib keeping the camera on standby and looking out for any sort of ghoulish signs (claw marks in the foliage, bloodied bones or dips in the ground where the dirt has been dug out, shedded teeth and skin and hair) as Zim, for once in his life, remains quiet. Save for an insult here and there, of course. It's not a day with Zim unless there's at least four or five remarks about his humongous head.

Dib sneaks a glance towards him, and the alien is busy surveying the area with a device sticking out of his pack. Zim looks over the results, purple contacts squinting at what appears to Dib to be some sort of map, developing on the screen before he see’s Zim’s eye’s flicker to his own in the reflection. The device retreats back into the Pak and the alien turns and raises a brow at him. Dib blinks, remembers he had a fully functional camera in his hands and curses his own curiosity for missing the chance of capturing some damning evidence.

“So.” Zim speaks up, watching from a distance as Dib pokes and prods at a suspicious pile of leaves with a long stick. He pushes them back to reveal a small slug, the two of them gazing at it for a moment before Dib takes the stick and carefully pushes the leaf back onto the creature as an apology. “I’m your favorite alien?”

The comment is so unexpected and softly spoken that the hand clutching the stick snaps it in surprise, and Dib turns his head to send him a look. “What? No, I never said that!”

“Lies. You speak lies!” Zim’s voice raises in volume and Dib can feel a headache approaching. “You said so earlier, when you tricked me with that gas-station receipt!”

“I said it was a picture of my favorite alien, I never said that alien was _you_.I know plenty of aliens, you know.” 'Plenty' being like two, Tak as one and Zim the other, but the Invader didn't need to know the number count. Dib huffs, ears red and walking a little bit faster to create some distance between them. It’s a futile attempt, because Zim only speeds up to stomp next to him and continue the accusations. The teenager thinks about fake-sneezing on him. “You’re the one who assumed that I was even talking about you.”

For a split second, (and Dib has proof, because he’s trained his camera on Zim this time and is sure to record it) Zim’s face falls into a mixture of unease and dismay, before it’s wiped off and replaced with a stoic, blank expression that makes it much harder to read what he was thinking. He doesn’t miss the way his wig twitches as his antennae shift underneath, though. “You spend time with other aliens?”

Dib stops to process the question, and dully notes that it has hardly a hint of hostility to it. “Well, no, but-”

“Then it was me you were talking about! I am not foolish, Dib-worm, and I will not be tricked a second time by your insolent mind games!” A hiss, and Zim has returned to his prideful self. “You have admitted to having me as a favorite, which is decent. I’ll keep this confession in mind when I have conquered your world and have enslaved you and the rest of mankind to the empire. But know this, Dib-worm, Zim cannot be bought with flattery from those so beneath him, but I feel that you are also-”

“You are so full of yourself, you know that?” Dib interrupts him with a snark and grins at the offended look Zim shoots in his direction. The teenager purposely takes on a haughty tone of voice just to irk him, pun fully intended. “And you’ll never take over Earth, alien scum. I’ll never let you-”

“As I was _saying_ ,” A hiss, vile enough that a pointed tongue peaks out from sharp teeth as Zim snarls at him. “I was going to tell you something important but no.” He drawls out. “You clearly don’t deserve it. Stew over the fact that you’ll never know what it was. That’s right. STEW. STEW OVER IT!” He shakes his fists.

Dib is pretty sure that the alien didn’t exactly understand how that phrase went, but the irritation headache that’s been building in the back of his head for the past ten minutes didn’t care. So instead of responding, Dib slowly but surely, reaches a hand out back around the alien’s body (said alien was a bit too busy in his dramatics of telling the empty woods about how rueful the human boy would be) and forces a neutral look on his face.

Dib’s open palm slaps on Zim’s Pak and stays there, the Invader freezing and a wide-eyed look, jaw gaping the slightest as he stares at the teenager all the audacity of the notion as Dib himself tries to keep a smile from stretching on his face. It fails, a sly little grin makes itself known and Zim eyes it with upmost suspicion. “What did you-”

“I found you a friend.” Dib’s voice sounds like he’s trying to hold back laughter. “Look.”

His hand drops and Zim’s head swivels as far as possible (which is alarming a lot farther than a human head should be able to turn, Dib notes) and goes stricken at the sight of a tiny, little slimy creature resting confused and glued to the outside of his Pak. A _slug_ , and it’s dripping stickiness down the metal.

Zim screams and Dib laughs. Laughs even harder when the Invader reaches his arms around his back in an attempt to dislodge the thing from his back, spinning in a circle yelling about ‘germs’. The paranormal investigator has to lean on his knees to catch his breath as the alien attempts to pull out a Pak leg in order to shake the slug off, only for abhorrent horror to come across his face as he miscalculates and he feels it _drop inside_ the entrance of his Pak where the leg extends.

After about another minute of laughter (and screaming) Dib feels his lungs burning, thanks the forest for having such cleaner air than it would have in the city and decides that enough was enough. “Okay, okay!” He coughs out another chuckle. “Let me, ha- Let me help you-!”

He’s cut off abruptly by a sucker punch to the jaw. Dib stumbles backwards in shock, holding a hand up to the spot that will defiantly be bruised in a few hours and glares daggers at the alien across from him. Zim’s facial expression is all bared teeth and aggression, eyes fueled with anger and disgust, one metal limb hanging out of his back for fear that if he draws it back inside he will crush the slug and all it’s gooey-ness within his Pak.

“You will _pay_ for what you have done to Zim.” He takes a step forward. An obvious sign a fight was about to begin. “I will take your skin and turn it into soap, and give it to my robot to make waffles with, you insufferable, smelly, little worm.”

Dib rubs the sore spot on his jaw and sends an equally hostile snarl in the Invader’s direction. Forget trying to help him, they were wasting daylight and pretty soon this whole trip would have been for nothing. He could have gotten so much done already if Zim hadn’t of intervened. He could have at least found some claw marks by now.

So instead of saying something witty in response (his twelve year old self would have had a list already) Dib gets a running start and meets the Invader head-on, pulling back a punch and aiming for contacts. Zim dodges, not surprisingly well, and a clawed hand hooks it’s way around Dib’s midsection and the teenager feels the air violently slammed out of his lungs as he’s slammed to the forest floor, pebbles crushing up against his spine and dirtying his hair.

“You freak!” Is all he can get out before he cuts himself off with a sharp intake of air, Zim pressing on his chest and snarling in his face.

“Get it out!” Zim spits in his face, the one Pak leg that cannot retreat coming forward and Dib hisses in fear as it shoots towards him. A slicing sound, and he peaks open his eye to see the metal limb pining the hood of his hoodie to the ground, sharp tip sinking into the fabric and soil. Zim knees him in the stomach. Dib feels the back of his head meet the hard soil again and again, not enough to cause damage, but Zim is shaking him with enough curiosity he's starting to see stars. “Get it out! Get it out! _Get it out_!”

A struggle, Dib sputters out curses as his legs kick out and eyes shuts shut closed, the Invader cringing above him as he flails, pining the investigator to the ground in a fit of anger that’s burning into more and more disgusted panic. The sound of cloth tearing as Dib strains his neck away from the Pak leg reaches his ears and he inwardly says goodbye to another previously untarnished piece of clothing, but fights with Zim never promised a long life to his wardrobe anyways. The claws bunching up his collar in a threat was a example of this.

Legs going still, he prepares himself, rips his arms outwards and leans upwards as far as he can possibly make it with his hood still pinned to the ground. Zim snarls and spits in his face but his yell is cut off when Dib pulls him into a mockery of a hug, arms wrapping around the alien as one limb struggles to keep the him close to his chest, the other hand searching for his Pak.

Dib finds it, fingers digging into the metal Pak for a split second (a second full of fear and uncertainty, as Zim could recall his leg at any moment and possibly slice his hand right off) before pulling out the villainous slug with two fingers and letting the alien lurch backwards and he extracts it. He holds it up, eyes bleary and panting. Zim stares at them both, wide-eyed glare flickering from amber eyes to the slug.

He opens his mouth to speak, but Dib shoves him off with his knee, sitting on his stomach (or sqeedily-spooch, whatever Zim called it) and dangling the still-alive slug over the Invader’s face, breath caught and childish fury in his gaze. “You’re ruining my investigation!” He accuses, pushing the slug forward towards the alien’s mouth. Zim doesn’t shy away, instead curses his name and goes to bite for his hand.

“I swear, I’m gonna-” He pulls back a gasp as Zim nearly bites off a finger, before placing a hand on the invader’s forehead to try and still any movement.

“Don’t you dare!” Zim’s hisses. “I’ll rip you apart and feast on your organs!”

It’s not a threat he hasn’t heard before. Clawed hands reach out and make for his neck, keeping him at a distance, digging into the flesh.“I’m gonna make you eat this you stupid alien _scum_ -”

Laughter. Soft and feminine.

Both bodies on the forest floor stop their struggling, Dib looking upwards and Zim craning his neck to glare at whatever dared laugh at his expense. A distance away, on the outskirt of the clearing, is the shape of a human being. Watching them, observing them, mirth in their view and interest in their pose. It’s got the shape to be of a woman but a very skinny one at that, clothes tattered and hair slightly matted. Pale, she doesn't have any color in her cheeks or lips, as if her entire face has been powdered. She's smiling, clearly amused by the shenanigans of the two boys but something seems off. Something odd. Her eyes reflect the sunlight a little strangely.

Dib doesn’t get a second to speak out though, as his body lurches upwards as Zim uses the Pak leg to crane himself upwards, effectually sending the teenager flying off his body and knocking his back against a tree. The slug flies from his hand and lands somewhere in a safe pile of leaves, scuttering off back to safety, the poor thing.

When he shakes his head of the dizziness, he catches the woman still staring, sending him a smile, then a little giggle resounds from the forest as she darts off in a flash of grey and white. She was human, a little weird looking, but obviously human. What was she doing out here in the woods? Was she lost? Did she need help? How long had she been watching them fight? Did he look like an idiot again? How much did she see? Surely she saw the Pak legs, so that made her a witness. Someone that could vouch for him not being crazy. Maybe she knew something about the ghoul as well? If he caught up to her, perhaps this day wouldn’t be such a lost cause after all. Dib scrambles to his feet-

-only to be pushed back down again, Zim standing over him triumphantly. The alien looks over his nemesis with grass stains all over his clothes and an obvious hole in fabric of his hoodie, hands on his hips and shouting out to the now-darkening sky. “Victory for Zim!”

“Shut. Up!” Dib swipes at his legs, not surprised to see the alien dodge them as he rises to his feet, picking back up his backpack and camera (it had been tossed during the fight, but one check of the lenses tells him that nothing is broken so he doesn’t need to think about it further) and sprinting off in the direction of where the woman had left.

He can hear a protest as he runs. “Wha-Hey! Where are you going, stink-boy!”

“Paranormal!” He huffs, the exhaustion from the rough and tumble taking a toll on his running ability. “That lady! She might- She might know something!”

“What?” He hears Zim call out in confusion, probably too far of a distance to even hear him fully (he knew the alien had poor hearing, but he was too rushed to stop and turn around) so Dib ignores the yell and keeps sprinting.

He hears a noise every so often, footsteps or a giggle, the hush of a voice calling to him, (he swears he hears his name but that’s stupid, he’s never met this lady in his life, how would she know it?) and swings around ever bend, jumping over logs and exerting himself until his lungs are burning and his legs are sore and Dib has no choice but to pitifully slow to a stop, hands on his knees and breathing hard.

The slightest sliver of white darts out around a tree and he reaches a hand out towards it. “Wait!”

No response. Only the sound of trees leaves bristling in the wind and his own panting. The crunch of leaves behind him do not come from a distance, and Dib is suddenly very aware of a presence standing behind him. Hard grip on his camera, the teenager spins around and prepares for whatever snuck up behind him.

It’s Zim, color him surprised, and not a hint of exhaustion on the Invader’s face. Purple eyes scan the human’s body and frowns at the exertion. Either he was very silent catching up to the investigator, or Dib was too focused on following the mystery woman that he didn’t even notice the alien keeping up with his running. No matter, he was still a little jealous of Zim’s obvious smugness at Dib’s exhaustion. Curse him and his stupid alien soldier biology. Whatever.

“What on Irk are you scrambling about for?” The Invader’s tone is both insulting, but more curious. Dib shoots him a look. Didn’t he see the lady too? Was he going crazy? “You look like a maniac.”

Dib takes a moment, inhales deeply and lets out a huff of air that sounds more like giving up by the second. “That woman. She’s….odd. I don’t know how but I just-” A cough, he straighten his posture and takes a look around the forest. The sky has darkened, and the once low lit forest floor is getting dimmer by the minute. He’s pretty sure he brought a flashlight in his backpack. “I wanted to ask her some things. See if she knew anything the locals didn’t tell me. She looked…” Dib thinks for a moment. “Nice.”

Nice, as in friendly enough to approach, given her playful behavior. But as soon as the comment comes out of his mouth, Zim shoots him a scrunched look. “You should get your optical enhancers checked. She was clearly deceased.”

Dib blinks, furrowing his brows. “Dead people don’t run away, Zim.” A pause. “Unless they’re zombies, but then they would run _towards_ you. You know, to eat you, and stuff.”

Zim makes a non-committal noise, waving the investigator off. A device stims from his Pak, the one from earlier Dib notes, and he feels the grip on the camera tighten. He doesn’t point it in Zim’s direction though, for no reason whatsoever, and just watches as the alien runs a scan on the area and reads the irken text displayed across the screen, fake eyes darting over the map.

Suddenly, a few thousand dots scatter across the screen. Zim frowns, mutters something in Irken about stupid birds and wildlife. Those dots turn into hundreds, then a handfuls, until there’s only two, marked in the center of the map. Zim turns to him with a smug look. “If that creature was alive, she would have appeared on my scanner. I’ve blacklisted everything that’s not humanoid-and myself, of course.” He adds with a haughty flair. Dib just huffs at him to continue. “We’re the only living beings out here.”

Impossible. The woman was clearly alive when he looked at her. Weird looking and in desperate need of a change of clothes, but dead people don’t smile! Unless…Dib gasps, realization coming to mind, and opens his mouth to speak.

Zim cuts him off abruptly. “I didn’t see any fangs for her to be this ‘vampire’ either.” He raises two claws to emphasis the words.

The dark haired teen glares at him. “I didn’t even get to say it yet-!”

Another laughter. Their heads swivel to meet the sound, catching sight of white and fast blurs of tattered clothes. Amber and purple stare at the spot for a split second before Dib breaks out into another sprint, hand outstretched and calling out. “Wait!”

Something grabs him and he feels himself lurch forward, suddenly running a lot faster (seriously, this was more than he can keep up with. With every step he took it felt like he flew ten feet) and Dib blinks down at the clawed hand wrapped around his wrist. He looks up, wind whipping around his face and making his odd hair piece flip annoying in his eyes.

Zim peers over his shoulder, but doesn’t stop running. “You are so slow it’s laughable!”

He’s fast, he can feel it now. This explains why he was always able to outrun him in their chases. Dib blows his hair out of his face and allows a single laugh to bellow out. “Do you even know where she is?”

“Of course I do! I’m Zim, I’m incredibly smarter than you!” They catch sight of her again, rushing among the trees. For the first time, Dib feels himself being able to keep up, thanks to the Invader. Not that he’ll say that out loud, maybe later, but for now, his attention is focused on the woman’s laughter and the odd sense of doom that trails her every movement as they follow.

Dib almost trips over a log, thinks he’s going to hit the ground before he’s hoisted back up on his feet running again. Zim calls him an idiot, the woman’s voice rings in the air and in his ears. At some point they must have passed by a corpse or something else, because the air starts to smell rotten and the suffocation in his lungs from all this physical exercise wasn’t helping the stench in his nose or the grossness he felt at the back of his throat. Almost like he could taste the rot that held in the air.

Still, they round the bend and hop over a particular small cliff. Zim’s Pak legs jut out and reach the ground before they do, arms around his torso as they fall until his feet hit the ground and then they’re gone again, grasping his hand, no longer his wrist but holding tightly as they continue the chase.

Zim is laughing. He’s also spewing insults about how his big head is slowing them down, but there’s a smile on his face without a hint of hostility. He’s having fun. Oddly enough, Dib is too. The thought strikes his brain hard enough he almost stumbles over a tree root and Zim has to yank him up by his coat sleeve until they’re on the move again.

Eventually, after what seems like forever, the chase ends. They skid to a stop in a clearing, the sun-set casting dots and patterns of orange and yellow light on the forest floor from the tree line above. The cause for their chase sits hunched over in the middle of it all, looking almost ethereal from the lighting.

Dib takes a longer moment to catch his breath than the Invader does, eyes locked on the still-figure in the middle. Zim snorts something to his right but it doesn’t catch his attention, only questions and theories and the pure, unbridled curiosity of a paranormal investigator taking over his thoughts. Straightening his posture, dusting off his trenchcoat, Dib approaches the woman, camera ready.

“Uh-” It hits him that he has come up with absolutely nothing to say in during the chase. Zim chuckles behind him. “Ahem, Excuse me, m’am?”

He hopes his polite manners would make her turn her head, look in his direction or at least mummer something in response. But nothing sounds from the woman, still like a statue, hunched over in an almost awkward position. Dib feels the hair on the back of his neck raise for some reason, but shakes the anxiety away in the pursuit of the paranormal, and takes another step forward. “My name’s Dib Membrane, paranormal investigator. I was wondering if I could ask you some questions?”

In the middle of the thought that yeah, maybe chasing a lady through the woods wasn’t exactly a good first impression, Zim laughs at his introduction. “She’s afraid of your massive head!”

“Shut up about my head already!” He whips around for a second to send a glare. Zim has the audacity to wink at him in that moment, which turns Dib’s face red with rage and maybe something else, but he shrugs it off, coughing awkwardly and turning back to the subject at hand. “If I could just take a few moments of your time I’d like to ask you some questions? It would only take a second.”

The woman still doesn’t answer him. Dib starts to worry. Zim’s laughter has fallen quiet, the sound of his boots snapping twigs underneath him until he’s at Dib’s side again, hands on his hips and staring down at the back of the humanoid that has yet to acknowledged both of them.

“Leave her.” The alien speaks up. He sounds unusually serious. “I don’t like this.”

Dib’s nose twitches in irritation. Stubbornness was something he was known for, his sister has told him, and he felt it creeping up in his chest now and then. He ignores him, stepping forwards and towards the woman. Vampire? Zombie? Whatever it was, he had his camera at the ready, giddy and excited, desperate for something to prove as today’s findings. He won’t go home empty handed. “M’am?”

No answer. The sound of breathing. It’s not his, nor Zim’s. She sounds like she’s in pain. Dib reaches a hand forwards to her shoulder.

A hand reaches out slaps it away, another one reaching forward and taking place on the woman’s head. Dib is about to scold Zim, both for knocking his grip away and for being rude to whoever was in front of them, but goes silent as his claws dig into the woman’s scalp, slightly sinking into the flesh and pulling away.

Zim blinks, staring wide-eyed horrified at the hair that has slunk off the woman’s head like silk, whatever remained slid off her head, revealing a harsh white skull. Dib’s breathe hitches, taking a step back.

The creature turns it’s head. It’s eyes hold no humanity, light reflecting white the kind of way only predators can. It’s mouth gaping open, teeth as thin as toothpicks and sharper than razors peeking out, it’s nose short, every orifice it a hole of black, sucking him into the abyss, clouding his mind and making it impossible to run away. His blood runs cold, the air stills and the creature lets out a loud, victorious _hiss_.

The online articles weren’t exactly correct, but the description of the ghoul was pretty spot-on.

It lunges.

Of course it goes for Dib. A curse spews from him, voice cracking as he stumbles backwards as five sharp nails of bloodied bone and rotting skin reach for his neck. The back of his ankle hit something hard and his head dips as his body falls backwards, landing on his ass with an oof. The creature over estimates it’s jump, soaring over his head and landing on a tree.

Scrambling to his feet, Dib blinks to make sure that last observation was true. It’s razor claws dig into the tree, keeping it hoisted while glaring at them both. A viscous sound rips from it’s throat, The startling realization that they’ve chased it so deep into the woods, far from civilization, where no one could hear their screams blares warning sirens in his mind. They’ve fallen directly into it’s trap.

The creature skitters across the ground with such lightening speed that Dib’s only thought is to throw whatever he had on hand; the camera. He chucks it without grace, it managing to hit the creature in the shoulder. Not enough to stop it, but enough to slow it down where he can grab Zim, screaming something about his stupidity again (he knows if the alien hadn’t of kicked his stance out from underneath him, he’d probably be dead, but he’ll think about that later) and started running.

Running where? He doesn’t know, but as far away as he can. Zim is only partially able to keep up, this time Dib being the quicker in the chase, irony not escaping him as the hunters become the hunted. A screech resounds through the trees and Dib grabs Zim’s neck and forces him to duck as another blur soars over their head, breaking into another sprint as soon as he see’s the creature skid to a stop and bellow in their direction.

“What-!” Zim sounds stricken. “What on _Irk_ -?!”

Something tells Dib that Zim knew he was right about the suspicious woman, but he didn’t expect to be _that_ right. “It’s the ghoul!” He pants, ignoring the burning in his side. He’s going to be so sore from all this running. That is assuming he even lives to be sore. “I didn’t actually-” A cough. “I didn’t think that it’d-”

A screech. A blur of white materializes in front of them and Dib’s heart leaps up his throat, feet stopping and struggling to skid to a stop before the creature brings down another attack, barely missing them by the hairs on his skin. They split at the middle, hands unclasped and Zim falls off in the other direction. Dib falls to the side in a pile of mud and leaves (his backpack is god knows where) and he can hear the clunk of Zim’s Pak hitting the back of a tree as they tumble.

His glasses become unsettled in the fall and he’s quick to straighten them out again, throat closing with fear at the sight that greets him. “ _Zim!_ ”

Said alien was disoriented, clicks and other noises sounding from his Pak as he shook his head to come back to the present. In the wood he can hear the birds and the soft sound of leaves blowing against each other in the wind, the sound of Dib’s cry and the low hiss of this ‘ghoul’ that crept closer. Eyes scrunched closed, the alien moves forward from the tree, rolling out of the way just as a slash draws deep into the bark right where his speedily-spooch was moments prior.

Something hard, skeletal and smelling abhorrent grabs at his ankle and the Invader kicks out, the end of his boot meeting the ghoul’s face (he thinks he hears something crack, but he’s too focused on getting his Pak to work properly for his metal legs to operate in self-defense to focus on those details) he’s able to get on his own two feet, just in time to see a gaping black mouth filled with razor teeth not unlike his own speed in his direction.

A blur of white and darker blue, then red. Something wet and warm splatters across Zim’s skin and something warmer presses against his chest and pushes his back to the tree. Wild, wide purple eyes stare downwards, partially obstructed by Dib’s hair but falling low enough, just enough, to see the claws sinking further into the boy’s stomach.

Time seems to slow. There’s a small jerk in the body pining him to the tree as the ghoul drives in deeper, surprised by the sudden target change but not unpleased. Copper fills the air and Dib tilts his head just a bit to gaze into a shocked aliens’s eyes, inches from his own. The look on his face screams adrenaline and worry, like his brain hasn’t caught up with the situation yet. “You okay?”

Zim stares at him, mouth open. He looks horrified. Amber eyes blink. “Oh.”

Dib looks down, the ghoul’s daggered fingers not stopping the gush of blood that’s flooding out from his stomach. “Oh.”


	2. An Eye For An Eye

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, so I'm changing some of the tags because this story got a little bit more in detail then I originally planned, so I'm gonna say it again: if you're squimish to violence/gore/blood/body trauma and the whatnot, you do NOT need to be reading this. But if you're okay with that, go stupid go crazy, have fun reading.

Time has slowed to a crawl. What happens in seconds feels more like hours.

The pain doesn’t hit him, not immediately, and Dib is staring dumb founded at the space where the ghoul’s claws ended and his shirt began. Blood pools around it’s fingers and stains the blue of his shirt, turning it a darker maroon almost instantly. It drips downwards on the ghoul’s arm, past it’s elbow and falls to the ground to stain his shoes. There’s splatter on the leaves below them, on his trench coat, and possibly on his face because it feels so wet. Then again that might be tears, or sweat, but that’s embarrassing, so he hopes it’s the blood.

The body behind him is still and ridged, not shaking and breathing hard like his own, and Dib suddenly wonders if the ghoul’s claws had punctured through him completely and struck the Invader as well. He hoped not, because that would mean he’d basically done this for nothing, not that he knows why he’s doing it in the first place. It was a split second decision and probably not the best one, but the reasoning for it was for a Dib that wasn’t currently pinned to an alien, whom he was pinning to a tree, and when there wasn’t inches of daggered nail and bone impaling him through his stomach.

Time speeds up again when he feels a rough jerk, the feeling of pain shocking his system long before the sick _squilsh_ sound of the ghoul’s hand ripping out of his stomach reaches his ears, and Dib is slumping forward with a cry of pain that sounds more like asphyxiation.

He sees the ground rushing up towards him but doesn’t reach it, something wrapping around his shoulders and holding him at an angle. His vision flips and he’s facing the sky. More blood must have spewed from his wound because copper has overtaken every other woodsy smell in the air, his shirt is sticking to the skin of his chest from the wetness, and the tunic he’s pressing his face into is starting to turn a color darker than the usual red the Invader wears.

A metallic click, followed by a blur of bright, lazor red shooting across his vision. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he hears a shrill noise, and a sharp scream. He knows he’s moving, the pain ripping through his system every millisecond he exists and Dib wants to curse the world, curse the ghoul and curse himself for falling for it’s trick. But curses don’t come out when he opens his mouth, instead a guttural cry, a wheeze and the teenager curls into himself further as he’s dragged away, (carried away? his feet drag on the ground but he can’t really _feel_ the ground anymore. The world is tilted and spinning, the pain has taken away his sense of reality.) and with his free hand, reaches out without thinking for something, anything, to keep himself grounded.

His hand finds something soft and he curls itself around his fingers. Prying open his eyes (he doesn’t even remember shutting them) Dib searches through the mass of colors and shapes in his vision, trying to ignore the white spots and beckoning of animalistic agony as he blinks, mentally checks that yes, his glasses were still on his face, and finds green in the chaos.

Zim’s eyes have never looked this blown out before, the white of his contact nearly overtaking the iris and Dib briefly wonders what his shock would look like in natural red. Red, like the liquid that’s smeared across the Invader’s face, splotches of his own blood trailing down the alien’s jawline until it dribbled off in warm, little droplets back onto Dib’s cheek.

His teeth are bared. Zim must be disgusted. He never liked gross human fluids.

“Sorry.” Dib tries to speak, but what starts off as a strong word tapers off more into a raspy breath as his stomach suddenly lurches, tingling sending shocks of pain down his legs and through his arms. He bites his lip and crys out, nose burning and eyes scrunched tight. There’s the smell of something burning. He can smell it when he inhales just to whine in agony again. “Zim-”

“Shut. Up.” Words in Irken. His body is moving. The screaming hasn’t stopped and the shrillness of it was beginning to strain his ears, not that it wasn’t the most important sensation his body was feeling at the moment. It’s loud, and everything hurts, but Zim is close enough to his face that the alien’s hisses are are clear enough to make out even with the blaring noise somewhere nearby. “Do _not_ speak.”

Dib tries again anyway, and his response is being roughly laid down, dirt in his hair and a gasp turning into a hiss as his back hits the ground. The sky looks pretty from this angle, he could see the stars beginning to peak out where the tree branches didn’t hide them, and the forest around him was lit up in a particular orange glow, like fireflies were floating into the clouds.

Except the fireflies look more like embers and Dib was starting to writhe from the pain.

“Stop moving!” Zim’s voice cuts through the air like a scalpel, and it’s sharp enough and full with more seriousness than Dib is used to hearing. “If you don’t stop moving I’m going to lay your organs out, pack them up into little baggies and sell them on the intergalactic black market!”

The threat goes unheard of, because Dib is kicking his legs and bellowing out a scream as waves and waves of agony break through years worth of fighting aliens, cryptics and the normalcy of being reckless, tearing him apart from the inside and causing his throat to raw with every cry, eyes wide and the acute, strong awareness that only comes to one’s brain when it knows it’s going to suffer before it dies, and the universe was not kind enough to let you go without experiencing exactly what just did you in.

He’s been injured before. Pain was not foreign to him. But being stabbed in the gut really, _really_ fucking hurt.

Something is stuffed unceremoniously into his mouth and Dib bites down on whatever it is, tears welling up in his eyes as his teeth clamp down on something that taste like rubber and feels softer the more he clenches his jaw. The sound of cloth tearing, he forces his eyes to open and see’s a glint of metal moving about in the air above him, tip pointed downwards and working quickly. When it rises, it brings up dark cloth, familiar enough for Dib to register it as the torn ends of his trench coat, and Zim snatches it from the air.

It’s not until it’s removed from his mouth does Dib realize the item was actually a three-clawed hand, teeth marks on the palm of his glove where Zim had tried to keep him quiet.

“Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.” The Irken is muttering, both in English and Irken, and the sight of his panic is enough to make Dib stop his screeching, (the tears still flow freely down his face, the pain never stops, only his lungs demanding air, so he’s gasping for it desperately) to watch him as he moves his hands quickly, fashioning some sort of knot the investigator has never seen before. The Irken’s hands are fast to move, ignoring Dib’s yelp of agony as he’s lifted, something pushed underneath him and settled again. A make-shift bandage starts to form around his mid-section, he can only tell because the pressure against his stomach makes the pain send tremors up his spine again.

It hits Dib, in a moment of shocking clarity, that his soon-to-be murderer is apparently missing. “The ghoul.” He croaks, his voice comes out soft and riddled with cracks. “Wh-where is-”

“Busy.” Zim doesn’t look him in the face, glaring down at his work with furious intensity. “But not for long.”

The screeching still hasn’t stopped. Head laid flat against the forest floor. He forces himself to think of past injuries and what he’s learned from them. He knows how to do pain management, in the right circumstances. Deep breathes, fill your lungs, try to stay calm, don’t think about the blood or the fact that one of your organs was peaking through your skin, don’t think about the muscle spasms that are wracking you every two seconds, don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.

“It’s not working.” Zim sputters out. His hands are covered in blood and firelight dances across his face. “It’s not working. Why isn’t it working? Why are you still bleeding? Stop it. Stop the bleeding! You need to _stop_! I’m DEMANDING that you stop your pathetic body from continuing this disgusting display! I’m TELLING you to!”

Dib just stares at him. The world is dimming and Zim looks kinda funny when he’s scared.

The light flickers across the invaders face and purple eyes flick from the wound upwards, teeth bared and hissing in the way that Dib only know he does without thinking about it. A cough sputters from the teens throat, and bile rises from inside and the human tilts his head, prepared to vomit but only to scrunch in pain as the burning sensation rides up his cranium and pushes the nausea away to replace it with visions of white and black.

With his head turned to the side, he could see the source of the light. Tears obscure his vision but he’s smart enough to make out the shapes, the heat, and color of the embers and the smell of burning flesh, and how the screeching was beginning to turn into feral snarls and otherworldly growls.

The ghoul was writhing on the ground, not unlike Dib but more animalistic, digging his bare skull into the ground like a dog and flailing as it’s arm seared from the shoulder. The arm, Dib recognizes, had his own blood at the end of it, he could see the stained trail it left on the white skin and the long daggered claws that had introduced himself to his inner organs a mere minute ago. The creature spits and screams, the other arm clawing at the growing flames and smoke rising off of it’s skin, black charred flesh decorating white with speckled red in between. The creature had no blood in it to spill.

It’s between the movements of being lifted into the air, his face buried into a green neck as the rest of his body protested with fierce agony that Dib realizes that Zim is not short of lazors in that Pak of his, and he has set the ghoul on _fire_.

But it’s not enough, because the next thing he hears is a prompt curse in Irken and the bellowing growl of the ghoul’s rage barreling at them.

Zim dodges just in time, the ghoul landing somewhere the human can’t see, feeling only the intense agony along with every step the running Irken made. He’s clutched tighter into a ball and his stomach churns with every motion, his glasses are skewed and Zim is panting hot, panicked breaths in his ear. (Did Irkens have lungs or at least some sort of organ that functioned similar, he wondered? He hoped it would be something he would have found out before he died, as well as some other things.)

A clicking sound, something humming quietly but Dib is dis-focused enough to tune out the actual _important_ noise of the ghoul screeching as it chased it’s prey and instead zeroed in on the Invader’s Pak, peering over his shoulder just enough to watch it open a slot, metal leg extending and bringing with it a device that he could only assume was the one he had used to scan the forest earlier.

“Where?!” Zim’s voice is loud and demanding, though from Dib’s perspective everything was starting to sound like it was muffled. “Where do I fix you?!”

“Home.” The word comes out without thinking. Maybe he isn’t, he’s lost a lot of blood, too much for his brain to be working properly. He wishes Gaz were here.

Claws dig into his shoulder and thighs were the Invader holds him and he’s barely coherent enough to see a flash of teeth sent in his direction. He doesn’t know why, but the familiar expression of rage and frustration on the Irken’s face is comforting. Maybe it’s because it’s routine, usually Dib is responsible for that sort of look. Technically, he still is, in a sense, the same way pretty much everything was his fault.

“Your home is far away and you will not make it that long!” Zim’s voice hitches up mid-sentence as he ducks, they swerve hard in one direction as the alien keeps running. The ghoul is hot on their tail, nipping at his ankles and scaling the trees to try and get a jump on them. Suddenly, gravity is a little lighter, the wind is blowing harder into his face and it stings cold against the wetness on his cheeks. Dib buries his vision back into the Invader’s neck and dully notes in the back of his mind that Irkens are apparently warm blooded.

“Zim.” Dib is crying again. Some tears hit the skin of the Invader’s neck and begin to sizzle, but if the alien noticed, he doesn’t say anything. “I want to go _home_.”

His answer is a frustrated yell. “ _You_ cannot go home, your corpse will beat you to it, you insolent idiot!”

Dib goes quiet for a moment, snot nosed and inhaling deeply as they soared through the trees. Pak legs dig into tree bark, three of them keeping them in motion while a fourth hangs in front of the Invader at angle, the range of scanning extending past the forest, showing where the woods ended and civilization began. No matter how much closer those two dots were getting to the line, it still felt far, and the ghoul showed no sign of stopping.

Said creature leaps up within the trees inches from Zim’s leg and the alien hoists the human up further, ignoring the hiss of pain and press of blood on his chest as his knee reals back and kicks the incoming monster in the face. The ghoul stumbles back, it’s injured arm darting out to grip a branch only to retract it in pain as bits of flesh fall off from the impact, burning bones and skittering nails hastily clawing at the bark to find a grip as gravity dragged it down.

Dib expects a triumphant laugh, a snide remark or a ‘Victory for Zim!’. Instead he is met with silence and more agony as the alien keeps going. It’s not something he’s going to question, not when the ghoul has recovered from it’s fall and is quickly catching back up to them.

Maybe it’s the pain that’s slowly turning into an aching numbness, maybe it’s the fact that his limbs are turning cold and Dib can no longer see in the dark of the night, wishing for his flashlight or some sort of supernatural vision, since all he has to go off of was the pink glow of the Pak working overtime, or maybe it’s the truth that he’s never going to see his bratty sister again. Or his dad. Or fight with Zim on the weekends, or watch stupid conspicuous videos late into the night or give coffee to Gir to make the next couple of hours of the alien’s existence hell. He’ll never be a renowned paranormal investigator, just like he’ll never prove to the world that he was right all along, and knowing that his death will be marked off as an accident and the world will never know what he’s known, the earth will not be safe, not that it cared for him, no matter how hard he tried for it.

“This is all your fault.” Dib’s voice is low and raspy but he knows the alien can hear him, the chaos be damned. “If you never followed me out here, I wouldn’t ha-” A cough, a choking noise. He feels the alien falter his grip until Dib finds his voice again, and dully notes that the Invader has yet to interrupt him. “I wouldn’t have had to do that-”

“You are an idiot.” He spoke too soon. Zim cuts him off with nothing less than a snarl. “Human bodies are weak and fragile, all your organs in awful places and so easy to puncture. Irkens are more resilient. You know this. You made that decision. Your stupid, incredibly big head knew you had made a mistake and you decided to bleed for it.” To be completely honest, Dib is only catching half of what he was saying. “That is supposed to be _my_ decision to make on you.”

In the midst of the running, the alien dodging branches, Dib notes the ghoul sounds further away. His hands curled up against his stomach, coated in drying blood. He cannot feel his fingers, and he’s not sure if that’s because of the cold or that death is steadily creeping closer.“S’not just my mistake. You chased her too.”

The slur in his voice does not go unnoticed. He hears a click in the back of Zim’s throat. “I did.”

“And you followed me.”

There’s a slight jostle as they continue to run, but the wind has stopped biting him so harshly. Zim must have slowed down. “I did.”

“So.” Dib’s words don’t even sound like his own voice anymore, throat raw from previous screaming and body going numb, he breaths mummers into the Invaders neck and hopes that it’s coherent enough for the alien to understand him. “It’s your fault I’m dead. Congratulations.” He lets his fingers fall limp. “You won Earth, I guess.”

Sure, his last words might come off as a bit snarky, rude even, but there’s currently a gaping hole in his mid-section and his worst frenemy is pissing him off per usual. Dib thinks he may be entitled to a pass for his current mood.

His eyes are closed, so he can’t see Zim’s expression, but the low, undaunted voice that follows the declaration makes him feel colder than the autumn winds. “Save your praises for Zim when you are coherent enough to witness the glory of me destroying everything you know and love, Dib-stink! I need you alive to suffer-”

Something hard slams into them both, the Invader’s voice cutting off with a yelp and Dib’s eyes flying open as he’s flung from the grip. It’s too dark to see, but the teenager reaches out instinctively for something to grab onto, wind whipping through his hair as gravity pulls him down, hitting thin braces and foliage all the way down. For a split second, which is however the fall seems to feel like, Dib hopes the impact is enough to kill him instantly. Suffering blunt trauma paired with implalation right before being eaten alive is a hell of a way to go out, he’ll give anything to be lucky enough to make it quick.

But Dib was never lucky in life, and he feels the branches that break his fall snap beneath his weight until he hits the ground, the sound and feeling of something snapping on impact causing every feeling of numbness to wash away, pain flooding in new waves as he crys out. His scream sounds silent, his throat dry.

Adrenaline hits again, eyes wide open and for once, his body reacts on it’s own accord. Dib sitting up and curling into himself to clutch his midsection, no doubt where a few ribs have taken damage. His leg appears straightened but the pain above his ankle tells him that it did not survive the fall without being crippled. Dib hunches over and takes deep breathes, in and out, and tastes the copper on his tongue.

Another scream, and it’s not his’s own. Zim’s voice strains his ears and instinctively Dib looks upwards.

Still in the air, but fallen close enough to where the light of his overworked Pak illuminated both figures just enough to where Dib could see through broken lenses that alien and ghoul were locked in a pseudo aerial-fight. The creature latched itself onto his back, skittering and clawing at Zim while the former was torn in between using his Pak legs to keep himself suspended up in the air or lash them out at the attacker, only able to use his arms and legs to fend it off.

“You disgusting, miserable excuse of a-” Zim’s insults are not deterred, even when the ghoul’s soulless expression roars in his face and leaves scratches on the metal of his Pak and front of his tunic. “Die already!”

One of the Invader’s hands grasp the wrist of the ghoul’s damaged arm and yanks the same second claws find their way to his face. Zim screams something horrific when they puncture where the eye-socket began, pain fueled strength and panic causing his grip to retract and flail, taking the captured arm with it. The ghoul bellows out a high pitched screech as the burned flesh gave way on it’s shoulder, tearing from the body with strings of flesh piecing off of it. It’s dropped to the ground, the smell of rot suffocating in the air.

The ghoul’s response is to hurl it’s face into Zim’s face, inhuman screams as teeth find something soft and squishy, bite down and pull away.

Dib watches in painful horror as the Pak legs lose their footing and Invader and Ghoul alike come tumbling down, straight towards him.

“Shit!” He moves instinctively, rising to a poor-excuse of standing position to catch him, barely acknowledging that the make-shift bandage Zim has wrapped around his mid-section did a pretty good job at keeping all the blood in him, (tied in some weird knot, he wonders if he learned about it in military training) but not displacing the shock of pain that hits him the same time that Zim does.

His teeth clack together on impact, Irken and human alike groaning, the latter with his eyes scrunched closed and mind lost to the dis-reality that was trying to fight off every single miserable sensation his body was sending him. Zim’s Pak is digging into Dib’s chest for a moment before he can feel him scramble to get up, Pak legs stretching out again and sinking into the soil. Dib feels something snag the collar of his trench coat, and words muttered in Irken next to his ear. Something about sight. Something about an eye.

Whatever he was trying to say, Dib doesn’t get to hear it. Teeth and bone sink into the boy’s arm and the teenager yells out, legs kicking out at the attacker. The ghoul is undeterred, blood filling it’s mouth and dribbling down it’s chin as it dragged it’s prey away from the alien who was still trying to collect his barings, head shaking and hissing profanities as one hand coming up to hover over an empty eye socket, small wires and biological cords peaking out of the hole where his optical used to be.

With Zim distracted and the ghoul biting his arm like a buttered corn on the cob (Dib wonders if his brain making little jokes at this point is a side effect of dying or just simple in-the-moment insanity) pure human-survival instinct takes over, and Dib curls a hand into a fist, straining every other part of his body as he’s dragged across the forest floor, raises it over where he hopes the ghoul’s face is and punches.

He strikes something hard like bone and feels something gooey come back onto his hand when he pulls back but hits again. His knuckles start to hurt but the teeth in his arm sink out a little. He hits again, the mouth on his flesh leaves and his fist dives into an open mouth, a rotting tongue touching his skin as razor teeth close down around his wrist and Dib is pretty sure his hand is a goner.

In the same second sharp edges create a ring of blood welting from his wrist, another shrill sound reaches his ears and light fills the area. The sudden illumination of the ghoul’s horrifying, pale and blood covered face is heart-stopping. Dib’s fingers grasp around something and pull the same time heat erupts in front of him, the teenager scrambling backwards with heavy breathes and dizzy vision.

He stares forward. The ghoul is on fire again, this time the lazors don’t stop. Each shot fired directly onto it’s withering body until Zim comes into field of vision, face twisted with a smile that puts the monsters in his nightmares to shame. Pak legs come down on the squirming body, inhuman growls turning into whimpers and cries as metal tears pale flesh from limb to limb. A small part of Dib recognizes that Zim could have done that to _him_ at any point in time.

The Invader is laughing, taunting in Irken as the creature scrambles in place, claws digging into the dirt as it can only helplessly be torn apart alive. “How does that one human phrase go?!”

Two Pak legs pierce the body and pin the ghoul down, just barely alive. Zim leans down and Dib is reminded of a snarling lion, cheeks nearly splitting at the edges of his smile. “ _An eye for an eye_?”

Two claws stick inside the holes of the ghoul’s face and it howls. Zim’s smile falters at the lack of findings in the socket, extracting his fingers and flicking the goop and blood away. His face twists into expressions of rage and disappointment.

Amber eyes watch in stunned horror as Zim takes the ghoul’s other arm, riddled with holes and injuries from the Pak leg’s attacks, and slowly but surely, pulls it away from the shoulder, tendons stretching and the sound of snapping filling the air as the creature whines.

One Pak leg transforms at the end to resemble the lazor shooter again, shoving itself into the torso of the pinned ghoul where the limb was pulled away. Zim huffs. “This is what happens when you threaten an Irken Invader.”

The lazor fires, burning the ghoul’s inside so it’s skinny innards would match the blacking charred skin on the outside. Zim keeps his mouth in a snarl, low words coming from him. He’s seemly talking to no one, no one but the form on the ground that looks more and more like a goopy, mass of white, burning pulp.

Zim mouth twitches into a snarl. “And this is for trying to take a life that belongs to _me_.”

A third Pak leg rises, aiming for the ghoul’s screaming head and Dib makes the rightful decision to look downwards right as it pierces through it’s skull. The crunching noise of metal breaking through bone and the screeching cuts off abruptly. Silence fills the air, then familiar, comforting maniacal laughter.

He stares at his stomach. There’s white spots in his vision, spaces in his site where it’s just blurs of black, areas where he can’t focus. There might be glass embedded just underneath his eye, a tell-tell sign his glasses were finally goners.

The bandage has come undone and unconsciousness blurs at corners of his vision. Dib flexes his fingers to see if he could still move and something squishy is clutched against his skin. There’s an eyeball sitting in his palm. It looks sheen and plastic in the firelight, with small wires sticking out of the back end.

Cool. He closes his fingers around it and promptly lets his back hit the ground.

“Dib!” Snickering from the Invader. “Tell me you saw Zim tear that disgusting creature apart!”

God, he hopes this idiot doesn’t deliver an eulogy at his funeral.

“Dib!” Shuffling, the smell of burning flesh hanging in the air. Hands come to his side and hoist him up so he’s sitting at an angle. “Don’t tell me you missed it! You can’t die, yet. You haven’t witnessed the destruction of your filthy planet!”

Dib opens his eyes to wander away from where the mind was trailing off to, but all he see’s is darkness, and he doesn’t think it’s because it’s nighttime. “You pathetic weakling, you’ve survived _worse_ than this!”

Yeah, he did a lot of dangerous stuff when he was younger. Still up to that sort of shenanigans now, even. But none of them ended like this, he always scrapped by with minimal injuries, or at least any that would leave a cool looking scar. None of his misadventures ever left him gutted in a unfamiliar forest. Zim never _stabbed_ him before. Dropped a vat of explodey goo on him? Oh he totally did that, but not once did the invader ever take a Pak leg and _shish-ka-bob_ him.

“Idiot.” He feels himself moving. He doesn’t know where. “I thought you were better than this! Stronger! Zim’s enemy cannot be taken down by anyone but Zim, especially not some gangly zombie beast!”

It’s not a zombie, it’s a ghoul, he wants to tell him. But he cannot speak, and his mind is wandering to what paranormal articles were right and which were wrong, and the tragedy that his death will most likely be marked off as a mystery murder since no one in their self-proclaimed right mind would ever think he was done in by a mythical legend. Maybe they’ll say it was bears.

“Dib-beast! Look at me! Look at Zim!” Something is shaking his face. Dib can feel his eyes remain open, staring blankly upwards, but nothing is registering. “Dib.”

He hopes Gaz will be okay in that big house by herself.

Something glides over his chest, lingers on his pulse and then moves. Dib’s hand is taken into it and the fingers are crushed by how tightly it’s held. He tries to squeeze back. He can’t move.

“ _Dib._ ” Something wet is touching his face.

There’s a pause, and finally it’s over. The numbness is returning, the feeling of oblivion is so tempting and the nausea that’s been keeping a vile taste in the back of his throat fades away. He doesn’t feel his body being laid back against the ground, nor does he feel the remainents of the make-shift bandaged being ripped away and his shirt pulled upwards.

He feels nothing, as he hoped it would be, until there is an undeniable, unstoppable searing shock tearing through him, echoing in his spine and the world has disappeared.

* * *

_Rolling back…_

_…_

_Rolling back…_

_…_

_Rolling back…_

…

You are two rotations old and you have just nearly killed your sparring mate. The fellow smeet’s body is broken beneath you and you feel bad, really bad. The instructor only frowns at your whimpering and yanks you up by the antennae, throwing you forward and demanding you finish the job. At your hesitance, she threatens Pak deactivation. She only gives her approval when you’ve put your shaking hands around the smeet’s neck and squeeze.

…

Your first creation as a scientist on planet Vort is large and gooey. You made a special collar just for it. You give it a name and feel very proud of it. Your Tallest leader Myuki is eaten alive by your creation, and her replacement soon followed less than a day later.

…

You are no longer a scientist and instead are drafted into the war against the Plookisians. You haven’t grown into your battle armor yet but you make it work. This will be easy, you think, since you’ve killed plenty of other inferior lifeforms before. Other Irkens still look down on you, a few even accused you of treason. You decide to prove your loyalty by being the best solider you could possibly in Operation Doom. You accidentally kill hundreds of Irkens in your excitement in piloting the Big Robot.

You’re sent away to work as a food service drone but your name makes the headlines. Bigger Irkens look at you weird now and call you a war criminal when you serve them Vortdogs.

…

It’s assignment day. You are standing in a large room with Irkens surrounding the stage you stand on, the Almighty Tallest look down upon you in all their glory. You raise your hand in a proud salute with a smile and the Purple one’s eyes narrow and mummer something to the Red. Then they speak loudly in Irken, floating over to where a large map of the known galaxies spread out and plucking a sticky note off of the corner.

Snickering and whispers echo around you as they give you an advanced Sir unit, the only one of it’s kind. You chalk it up to jealously and let the pride swell in you for having received such a special mission.

…

Six months have passed. You have invaded Earth with your trustworthy but not-so robot, and have infiltrated one of their learning facilities. You nearly self-destruct when a big-headed boy declares you an alien almost immediately, only to relax as the rest of his peers turn on his for such accusation. He sends you a glare from across the room and you grin as one of the children fires a spitball at his humongous head.

…

You have planted mind-rotting bots into the mashed potato at lunch, and wait for your nemesis to find you in the cafeteria kitchen. The Dib foils your plan because you spent too long monologueing about it and not enough time to pay attention as he promptly kicks you into the vat of disgusting earth mush where your bots scramble over you. It takes three days for your Pak to repair the damage and you vow to never go near another mashed vegetable again.

…

It’s a middle school dance. The Teacher-turned-DJ is playing abhorrent music over the speakers and the entire gym smells like snot and unchecked adolescents. You knock a girl over into the snack table as you leap over, chasing the Dib as he runs away with your weasel detonator. The weasels escape eventually and the two of you are thrown into detention, forced to sit on the opposite sides of the room. Dib scribbles on a piece of notebook paper and raises it up to you. It’s a picture of you, but you have the head of a frog. You quickly draw a picture of him with a disco ball for a head, fold it neatly and throw it at him.

…

It’s ninth grade and Dib comes to school with spots all over his head. You laugh at him and his embarrassment and ask him if he would like some little, tiny suits to go with all those ‘Pustulios’ all over his face. He rolls his eyes and walks away, but you’re not finished mocking him, so you sit with him at lunch despite his protest and insult him until his scary sister throws milk at you.

…

On the Dib’s 16th ‘birthday’, an Earth term you’re still unfamiliar with, he gets a pathetic, ugly excuse of a vehicle. He taunts you about it, shoving his ‘driving licenses’ or whatever the card may be in your face like it’s some sort of achievement you’ll never reach. You track him down one night while he’s driving on an empty road and hover in the Voot beside him, grinning, showing off and doing all sorts of tricks and spins until he stops his stupid car to yell at you.

You take the opportunity to kidnap him, Gir holding him down to the Voot’s pilot seat with laughter as you soar in the sky, doing loops and flips to show off your superior Irken technology. He laughs at some point too, and it catches you by surprise. You regret it when he throws up on you.

…

The Tallest have not answered your calls and you have not been your best. You know your worry is misplaced, as they must just be in a part of space where reception is horrible, but you cannot help yourself from glowering down at your desk in math class where you’ve scratched little Irken symbols into the wood with the tip of your claw through your gloves and not answer as Dib passes by your desk on the way to his own, giving you an odd look when you don’t acknowledge his daily insult.

Something smacks you on the head and falls on your desk in front of you. You blink and pick it up; a half-eaten chocolate bar. You, as well as a few student around you, look to the side and see Dib focusing very intently on that tree just outside the classroom window.

…

You have sent Gir to keep your nemesis busy so you could plant bombs around the city without the Dib catching on. You’ve sent him to do this before, and it hasn’t worked yet, so you attach a spy camera to Gir’s inner opticals and bring up the video feed to see what havoc the robot is doing. You regret not also attaching a microphone. Gir must be dancing, because the camera is shaking and Dib looks utterly perplexed.

You stop what you’re doing when the boy picks the robot up and settles him in his lap, returning to watching videos of cryptids and supernaturals without so much as a change in facial expression. You sit there in your lab, plan forgotten and watch the videos through Gir’s eyes until the robot decides he’s hungry and breaks Dib’s window blasting home.

…

It’s presentation day and Dib is has volunteered to go first. Collective groans from the class sound out as he pulls out slides of blurry images and detailed articles of supernatural evidence. You sit and watch as a girl throws a pencil at him and calls him crazy the second an article about aliens shows up on the projector. You watch as he grits his teeth and points in your direction. “Of course I know aliens are real! _I’m friends with one!_ ”

He’s pelted with an eraser and you freeze in place. You make eye contact as he’s walking dejected back to his seat, and you don’t break it even when he sits at his desk and puts his head down over his arms.

…

You eavesdropped between him and his sister. You gave Gir a lollipop and told him to watch the base. You follow him out to the forest because and he catches you with a trick, so you tear it up with your teeth and spit it out. You fight over a slug until his attention is torn away from you again and you refuse to let that keep happening. You argue and run in the woods with with him and you are having _fun_.

…

You are covered in blood and reeking of fear. The body beneath you is soaked red and the pulse growing faint. You have envisioned this scene many times in your head, and not once did you imagine the crushing grip of despair over your squeedily-spooch along with it. His hair is matted so you push it back and nearly cut your gloves on the jagged pieces of his broken glasses. He does not answer when you speak to him. Scanners indicate a human medical center a few miles from here.

He has stopped breathing. You do not hesitate when you reach behind you and _pull._

_…_

_…_

_…_

_ERROR: Host not found._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey I love being edgy


	3. No Scars To Show For This

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter! And this one is over 11,000+ words! It's a ride, folks.  
> Note: Chapter contains the processing of trauma and the mental anguish that comes with it, detailed descriptions of injury, not-exactly gory but technical eye trauma, and a single mention of vomit.  
> Starts out edgy, then angsty, then progressively gets more and more fluffy. Have fun.

Waking up is both a refreshing and jarring experience, because Dib is almost 100% sure that he’s supposed to be dead.

He feels nothing, but everything, kinda like in a way where your body in floating in a dark space and your hyper aware of it when you’re not supposed to be. Dib supposes that’s what death should feel like, a vast void of emptiness, lacking any sort of positive or negative feelings. The theory fits the lack of touch he’s feeling (or really, not so) and the pitch black surrounding him. But the deceased don’t think. The smell of bleach and sterilization assaulting his senses put a damper on his whole ‘being dead’ theory anyway.

So he floats there, in what he’s assuming is in a laying down position, but mentally floating there, until enough minutes pass and his mind clears the fog just enough for him to realize that he’s capable of opening his eyes. He does, and regrets it instantly. The room has been dimmed but the lights are still too bright, the sunlight shining through what Dib assumes to be a blurred square of a window falls right over his eyes and burns them. The senses are bright and intense and nearly painful, so he shuts them out.

He doesn’t open his eyes again until his ears start working, the clicking sound of shoes walking across tile. White, grey and blue blur into barely coherent shapes and images, muddling together until the room forms and registers in his brain. It’s clean, well-kept, machinery dotting the walls, and a figure stands with it’s back facing him, looking over what appears to be a clip-board in their hands.

Trying to speak brings only failure, but the person jumps when the smallest of a squeak comes out of his throat and spins around with lightening speed. “Oh, my!”

Dib squints at her and the woman returns it with an wide-eyed look, hand over her chest and looking both equally surprised as she is delighted. “Good morning, Mr. Membrane! I wasn’t expecting to see you awake today!”

Dib can really only stare at her. The muscles in his face feel weak and the rest of his body doesn’t respond when he tries to flex his fingers. The woman approaches his bedside, where he gets a full view of her; a honeyed complexion, a warm smile, and a name tag that his vision is much too strained to make out the word written on it. “Can you speak, Mr. Membrane?” She asks, continuing before he can even attempt to answer as if she knew that he wouldn’t be able to. “You’ve been out for a near 24 hours now. Dehydrated, surely. Maybe some water will help your throat? I’m sure you’re thirsty.”

Her voice sounds like nasally, loving Aunt. Dib likes her already, and the concept of fresh water was an offer he really needed to bank on. The woman says something else, something about fresh sheets and bandages, but the words go in through one ear and out the other as the void beckons again. Blackness tilts his vision and Dib finds the world disappearing as quickly as it came. The last sight he’s granted is the woman leaving to retrieve his drink as he loses consciousness, and he’s damned back to floating in nothingness.

* * *

When he wakes up for a second time, he is flooded with both a rush of pain and information.

Turns out the floating feeling wasn’t death, it was just a hell of a lot of pain killers they had him on, and the supply had been wearing off. It shook him from rest and cause him to whine, sounds growing louder until a nearby nurse took notice and adjusted the medicine properly so a steady flow of morphine kept him from wanting to wish for death. Someone in between the lurching nausea and pangs of agony, he musters up enough voice to tell them to keep it leveled. Not enough to knock him out, just dull the pain. The look he is given is odd, and they shoot a glance towards his injuries but shrug and carry out the request before leaving else where.

Awake and now certain that he is indeed alive, Dib blinks the rest of the slumber of out his eyes, looks down and spits out a dry curse. “Holy shit.”

He looked _horrific_.

He didn’t feel it. He had the morphine to thank for that, but just by looking at the mess strewn across his chest and the perched limb straight ahead of him was enough to remind him of the agonizing pain that accompanies these injuries. There was hardly a spot not uncovered by bandage or sterilization. His leg was in a cast, neatly done so that Dib couldn’t remember if it was his ankle or his femur he had compromised. He wasn’t willing to wack it to find out, so he’ll make assumptions until he can get a hold of that clip board.

Both arms and wrists were covered in pristine bandages, recently changed he noted. One wrist was wrapped more heavily than the other, shielding the teeth marks that scarred his skin from the outside world and keeping them hidden. Minor other marks covered his arms and legs, mainly from being dragged and scrapped across the ground like a doll. One hand’s knuckles were raw and starting to scab a little, but for the most part okay. Nothing he hasn’t seen before, and nothing he hasn’t come back from.

Testing the motions of his fingers, Dib runs a hand over his chest and feels the rise of bandages underneath the hospital gown. There’s a slight twing of pain at the motion as he does it again, remembering that he probably had a couple fractured ribs. Morbid curiosity and the desperate attempt to feel something, anything, after being kept in a feeling-less void for hours on end causes him to keep doing it. Two separate spots cause the worst pain, one being much too close to his heart for comfort, the other at the base of his rib cage. He lets his hand drop and tries not to wince at the sting the slight motion sends him.

The clip-board is far away at the end of his bed, just like how they do in the movies and what Dib has seen before. Getting to it seems like a daunting task, considering he’s going to have to somehow maneuver his body to the side to reach it. The wires sticking out of his arms provided extra difficulty and Dib quietly thanked his luck that he didn’t need a breathing tube or this minor mission of his was going to be practically impossible. Sure, he could always call over a nurse and just ask them to hand it over, or better yet, just tell him what’s the damage. But his head was swimming with fog, his heart kinda heart and his emotions haywire, so talking to someone at the moment didn’t exactly seem appealing.

He’s half-way across the bed and straining himself, fingers inches away from the prize when a smaller hand whips out and snatches it away from it’s hook. Dib looks up and finds eyes just like his staring back, or more realistically, squinting at him in all their judgmental glory.

“Rise and shine, you fucking idiot.” Gaz speaks with venom in her voice and it’s honestly the most welcoming sound Dib has heard in days. “You look like shit.”

The remaining feelings of desperation and relief flood him, and the sight of her after full, true belief that he’d never get to again practically rips the words out of his raw, dehydrated throat. “I love you.”

Gaz’s nose twitches, her grip on the clipboard tightens until her knuckles turn white. Dib doesn’t catch it, and takes a shuddering deep breathe to try and speak more clearly. “Just so you know.” His voice cracks. “Just in case.” He didn’t know if she knew that when he was dying.

His sister is still enough to make a statue envy, and the silent seconds that overtake the room is enough time for Dib to look her over. She’s in her usual attire, Game-Slave on pause and hanging dormant in her other hand. Her jacket slung over the visitors chair suggests she’s been there a while, (silent enough for him not to notice her all this time, it seems) and Dib momentarily ponders if she’s been missing school. He wonders if she’s eaten today, and almost thinks about apologizing for eating the last of the pizza rolls they had in the fridge before he had left.

But Dib never apologizes, it just wasn’t in his nature. But he’s currently sitting drugged almost out of his mind on pain meds, a little sentimental at the moment, too much for his own liking, and it’s very tempting to wonder if his little sister would have missed her brother as much as he would have missed her.

A stiff clearing of the throat breaks his concentration and Dib blinks back to focus. Gaz’s eyes are red, the skin around them puffy and damp.

“Whatever.” She says. There’s a crack in her voice. “You’re stupid.”

“ _You’re_ stupid.” Dib counters instinctively. Her response is a light thwack on the head by the base of the clip-board. He reaches up and grabs it, biting back a hiss as he brings it back down to front vision.

It occurs to him suddenly that he can see, and fingers fly up to feel glasses on his face. Unbroken, unbent glasses, his fingers brushing up against the bandage on his cheek where the previous one’s had left glass embedded in his face and spares a glance towards purple hair on the other side of the room. Gaz says nothing when he shoots her a questioning look and only frowns when Dib turns away and decides not to pry for an answer. Fixed glasses was not something he was going to refuse.

His mind was still a little foggy at the edges but getting better, the words sticking out and forming to make coherent sentences in his brain. The sound of the chair roughly scooting across the floor grates his ears and Dib doesn’t look over to his side when the little beeps of the Game-Slave unpausing reaches his ears, the mash of buttons and the digital echo of pixelated piggies dying one by one. Gaz has one elbow resting on the mattress, using it as a prop to keep the screen hoisted. Dib quietly notes that the screen was shifted more in a ways where he could watch her play if he wanted to, wonders if she’s doing that on purpose, before returning to the writing.

Multiple slash wounds. Bite and claw marks, with the word (animal?) written in red sharpie near the statement. Fractured ribs and possible concussion. A broken leg in which it was a clean enough break to go evenly through the bone, easy to set and quick to heal given time. Several stab wounds in the mid-section. Several entry wounds directly through his stomach, then one at the base of his rib-cage and the other next to his heart, below his collarbone, each of varying severity.

Dib lets the clipboard settle and stares down at his lap. He’s pretty sure he only got stabbed _once_.

Gaz clears her throat from beside him and he nearly jolts at the sound, a familiar look of fear flashing across his features before it returns to neutral again. She raises her brow a the action but says nothing about it, instead the routine air of disinterest and stoic overtaking her. It doesn’t exactly pair well with the closeness she’s giving off since a hug they shared in third grade that the younger sibling refuses to even acknowledge. The fact that Gaz is having this adverse of a reaction, knowing her, is startling. The loneliness is threatening, and the harrowing loss of a brother isn’t something Dib actually thought she’d care about.

The streaks on her face are still drying and he tries not to think about the guilt that’s building in his chest. “Where’s Dad?”

“He just left.” Gaz states it as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world, not looking up from her screen. Dib’s shoulders deflate more so than he thought was possible. If she noticed his disappointment, she makes no acknowledgement of it, but continues to talk as she advances to the next level. “We were here for two days. The nurse said you woke up earlier and told him about it, and that was apparently enough for him.” She pauses for a moment. “You were asleep when he was sitting in here earlier.”

“Oh. Okay.” Dib lets his back fall onto the pillow and stares up at the ceiling.

The fog in his brain lifts, and he raises a hand to his chest. “Have you…heard from Zim lately? At all?”

The look his sister shoots him is no less than a sneer. “You’re on your deathbed and you’re still worried about that cockroach taking over the earth?” She spits at him. “Give it a break, Dib. I haven’t seen him around, and I don’t care enough to find out for you.”

There’s a numbing, almost empty-feeling that enters his chest at her answer. More words form in jumbled messes in his brain, theories and questions and wonders scrambled together to try and fill in the bits and pieces that were missing from his memory, but his throat hurts and so did his heart for a completely different reason, his eyes feel hot and wet but he can’t bring himself to blink it out unless he wants to expose just how confused and broken he really was. So Dib just stares half-lidded down at his body and listens to his sister enter the level for the final boss.

* * *

Day Three, and they’ve moved him to a different room. It’s nicer, less machinery hooked up to him now that he’s stable and talking, and a lot less blaring white and stink of bleach and more of cream colored walls and ugly fake plants. Boring paintings stick to the wall, the sheets are only slightly more comfortable but at least there’s a window for him to stare out of. The TV is usually on, but he keeps it on mute, only watching the news with subtitles to see what he’s missing on the days he’s locked down here.

He’s in the middle of eating soft hospital quality porridge, watching a reporter with too much eye makeup talk about a recent local forest fire with no identifiable cause when the door to his room opens, and the nurse he’s been assigned peaks her head through. “Decent?”

“Yes, m’am.”

She shuffles inside, a bright individual he’ll never remember the name of, but it’s nice when she sneaks him extra sugar packets to put in the shitty coffee they have here. She carries a small bag with her, plastic and looking kinda of heavy. She holds it out to him with a neutral smile and speaks with a tone of voice of a professional that has done this many times before. “Your belongings. Everything that you had on you when we found you. Sorry we couldn’t get to you earlier. The clothes had to be discarded, unfortunately, they were…ruined. I would ask a family member to bring another set if possible.” She sets the bag in his lap and gives it a little pat. “Not for the next couple of days though, I’m afraid. You’ll be here with us for a little longer.”

Dib just blinks at the offering. Quietly, almost robotically, he sets the porridge to the side and grasps the bag in his hands. He can’t tell whats inside of it, not until he unzips it, but a question causes him to hesitate. He turns to the woman, whom in turn was waiting for any sort of reaction, and quirks an eyebrow at her. “Found?”

She blinks. “Hm?”

“Found.” He repeats. “You said that you found me.”

“Oh.” She pauses for a moment, as if the question wasn’t something she was expecting, and Dib can see she’s trying to keep her own doubt from showing in her expression. “We…found you, quite literally at our front doorstep, Mr. Membrane. You were unconscious and severely injured, but alive somehow. The amount of blood you had lost was ridiculous, our doctors were surprised to find you with a pulse, much less make it through surgery and there on after. Your recovery so far has been the fastest I’ve ever seen. Still cautious though, but most people wouldn’t even be awake for weeks after the sort of injures you sustained.” For such morbid words, she has a way of keeping the mood lighthearted. “The nurses around here are calling it a miracle-.”

“Was anyone else with me?” Dib interrupts. His fingers clutch the plastic bag harshly, causing it to crinkle.

He catches her face flash confusion before answering. “No? We found you alone.” She blinks at him. “Was there supposed to be?”

A pause, a heartbeat, and there is a crawling fear that’s made a nest in Dib’s throat and sending anxiety in spiels down to his fingertips. He masks it, turning away from the nurse and out towards the window in a very obvious unspoken sign that he wanted to be left alone. “Just wondering.”

The question caught her off-guard, he knows, and it probably didn’t help that the locals already thought he was crazy. But just this once, he hoped it played in his favor, and the woman gave him a nod and faint reminder that if he should need anything to just call or ring the button before carrying on her way, shutting the door behind her. Dib waits until he hears the smallest click of it shutting before glaring down the bag.

It’s small, too small to be carrying his camera or the contents of his backpack, which were no doubtably lost forever in either some muddy hole or burnt to a crisp in the fires that spread throughout. Maybe when he gets out of here he can go and see what he can scavenge, if anything. Equipment was expensive and he couldn’t run on just Swollen Eyeball’s funds forever if he wanted to continue his research, not with all those strikes put on him for losing such equipment. Still, a simple digital camera could do wonders, that is if Dib is ever lucky enough to have one longer for a week knowing his life style.

Zim has gotten more forgiving of his photographing habits, becoming less of afraid as long as the alien was in his disguise and the two weren’t talking about anything pertaining to the end of the world, his off-earthly status or just how weird he is. There’s a few memories, some of which most people would call _fond_ of them two, trapped in photos that Dib himself had taken. But there’s no sentimental to them. They’re evidence. Dib had a reason to collect them. For paranormal research, obviously.

Every single one of them, even if it didn’t really focus on the alien’s attributes. Like the one he took in sophomore year after Zim had gotten a pool noodle stuck on his head for some evil reason, or the photo of Gir in a high-chair, swallowing a pack of wax birthday candles after the alien had quietly confirmed it had been the anniversary of the robot’s ‘activation’. Or the photo of Zim posing proudly in front of the huge sand statue he had created in his own likeness their last class trip to the beach, or the blurry selfie of Dib laughing just barely out of camera shot, an angry Zim hot on his heals and toilet paper tubes stacked on his antennae.

Dib feels a single, soft laugh come out with the memory, and in the back of his mind he knows that something is wrong. He doesn’t feel like he should be laughing, that this reaction is normal. It doesn’t feel like…joy.

The feeling is indescribable and he’s too exhausted to waste any more energy thinking about it, so the teenager shakes the thoughts away and brings attention back to the subject at hand. He raises the bag, flips it around, shakes it a little and keens his ears at the soft rummaging sound it makes within. Without further hesitation, Dib takes a deep breath (a little too deep, as his lungs regret pushing against his tender ribs) and unzips the bag, dumping out it’s contents.

A phone, screen smashed and with a dead battery. A black wallet with an his ID, some cash along with his car keys to a truck probably abandoned by the side of the forest or even towed by now, and something round and squishy looking.

Dib plucks the object with two fingers and holds it up to the florescent lights. The strange plastic material surrounding it ended at one cut-off point of the sphere, small ripped wires and cords stemming from the back-end. It’s almost moist, he thinks, running the pad of his thumb over the bare skin of it’s surface, squinting a little when his nail rises up a layer from the ball. Curiosity and boredom fuel him. Dib lifts up the flimsy layer and sets it to the side.

Red glares up at him, familiar and warm, but out of place in his palm. Dib’s mind goes blank.

He opens and closes his hand around it, watching it disappear and reappear from his own vision as if it were to disappear every chance he hid it behind his fingertips. Rotates it, feels it with both hands, brings it closer to his face in both fascination and bewilderment, taking in every detail the eye could provide him, noting the reflections that shine off of it’s dark crimson. The same color of his blood, he thinks, and finds poetic symmetry within the eye in the palm of his hand.

“Zim lost this.” The words leave his mouth to echo in an empty room, lifeless like the numbing throb he feels in his mind. “He’ll probably want it back soon.”

Dib sits there for a little while longer, simply staring at the eye as if it was the only thing keeping him from floating away from the hospital bed. Then, he sets it on the bedside table along with the rest of his things, returns to his now cold bowl of porridge and stares blankly at the images of charred woods and smoldering remains on the TV screen.

* * *

It hits him in the middle of the night, the room pitch black with nothing other than the moonlight to guide his eyes as Dib crys himself until he’s sick and vomiting into the small trashcan they’ve left beside his bed.

The eye is held to his chest, causing a sharp flair of pain to spike through his ribs and down his spine but he doesn’t care. The pain is dulled by the nightly administration of medicine but that only softens the sting in his stomach and the throb in his leg, while his mind is left to wander to dangerous spaces and horrible visions of funny aliens burnt to a crisp in the middle of the woods, decomposing in a ditch with maggots in his empty eye-socket or strung up in a tree, eaten alive by the myth Dib had originally set out to capture.

Every thought brings a new feeling of nausea. There’s a pain in his chest that can’t be blamed on his ribs and a harrowing empty feeling that tears sobs from his throat and burns his eyes until the front of his shirt is soaked. Hunched over, hair a mess, squeezing a pillow to muffle himself as if his life depended on it because the last thing he needed was an overly nosy nurse to walk in during his mental breakdown and start asking questions that Dib didn’t have a proper answer for. At least, not ones that didn’t threaten to have him institutionalized.

The eye is the worst part. It’s unchanging while he cries, catches his breath and cries some more, mummers and incoherent words that fall into a mix of denial, apologies and downright accusations. He’ll open his eyes after scrunching them closed for so long, blink the wetness out of them to find red nearly glowing the dark of the room back at him. Judging him, watching him, all up until the point where Dib is tempted to hide it, be rid of it, break off the locks on the window and throw it so he’d never have to see that red again.

The fact that he’s holding possibly the last remaining piece of the closest person he could have called a friend keeps a steel-like grip in his hand and an soft wail to the feathers of his pillow.

The rational part of his mind tries to keep up, tries to make excuses. It wasn’t even his fault, and Dib made sure that damn bug knew it in the first place. He didn’t ask to be followed, he didn’t expect it, and yeah, taking the blow for the alien may have been a split second decision but Dib can’t say that he regretted it. Maybe a little, if he had known Zim would have gone out of his way to return the favor then what was the point?

That bastard should have been _happy_ Dib got stabbed. Should have left him for ghoul food in the middle of a forest where the local knew what he had come there to do and far away from home, where no traces could have been lead back to him. He’d be rid of his nemesis and no one would get in his way of world domination, no one would shoot spitballs at him in class, no more fighting or unwanted photos. Dib couldn’t send him video links at 3AM of frog dissections and receive horribly spelled threats of disembowelment in return. The bickering, the conflict, all of that would have come to an end the moment Dib’s heart stopped beating and Zim would have had the world.

But _no_. The alien was selfish, monologues some speech about needing him alive to see the world go up in flames and now there was no telling if the bug was out there alive somehow, dying, or a scrap heap of bones and metal along side the remainents of Dib’s camera and his sanity.

The eye glints at him as he swallows, having cried until there was nothing left to leave his throat. Amber eyes settle on red and Dib sits there, deep breathes in and out, before letting his hand close around it and his back hitting the bed. The hospital ceiling is flushed grey and blue from the outside lights, and the blurs of wetness still dot his vision until he wipes them away. Bringing his hand down, he runs it over the sore spots on his chest, two vertical, small entry points too clean to be made by anything organic and lets it sit.

Dib isn’t an idiot. He has a pretty solid theory as to what those marks could have been made by.

With Zim gone, the world will be safe. There will be no more fighting, and Dib could live the rest of his teenage years out normally, go to college maybe, become the paranormal investigator just like on the TV shows and forget all about the alien. That should have been wonderful.

A sudden, shy thought that Zim might still be alive out there somewhere appears in his mind and Dib not in any hurry to be rid of it.

Curling underneath the covers, he reruns memories of fifth grade and fleeting hope until the exhaustion knocks him into a dead sleep so deep he doesn’t hear the window lock breaking.

* * *

There’s a card for him sitting on his nightstand the next morning.

He doesn’t see it at first, only taking notice of it when the nurse that brings him breakfast smiles and points it out, asking who was it from and the other usual conversation starters. The folded paper looks out of place and hastily placed, strewn next to his keys and taking the place where his wallet used to be. Dib furrows his brows at it and hesitates to pick it up, especially since it was evident that the nurse wasn’t the one that brought it in, nor did any other doctor to his knowledge.

But he pretends to be interested and flattered anyway, so as to avoid the rising conversation she threatens with every glaces towards the eye bags the teenager now sports, darker and heavier than the ones he came in with. The woman gives him a professional sense of concern and by default, Dib offers a faint smile, card folded under one hand and reassures her. “I’ve just been up watching TV. My sleep schedule is a little out of wack here.”

She doesn’t look like she believes it, but an answer is an answer and they don’t get paid to pry, so she leaves him with soggy cereal and shuts the door on the way out.

Dib runs his fingers along side the cheap paper of the card. ‘BIGHEAD’ is scribbled in blue crayon, next to a pretty crude drawing of himself in a hospital bed holding a…taco?

He opens it. There is nothing coherent about the scribbled words or pictures in it at all, its almost as if someone had just taken a box of crayons and repeatedly threw them at the paper, folded it up neatly and addressed it to him. From what little context he can make out, there are words scattered here and there following along the lines of ‘breaking open his big head’, and Dib is glad there’s no doodle to provide the imagery.

For a moment, Dib suspects Gaz might have been the one to drop the card off, but quickly dismisses the idea. His sister had picked up drawing from a young age, so her skill was far past the rudimentary of crayons, and Get-Well cards just wasn’t her style. There’s no way in hell she would have willingly created this monstrosity. The half-colored in pieces of lettuce, or what Dib _assumes_ to be lettuce, strewn over what he hopes to be a picture of a very large taco.

Dib flips to the backside of the card. From: _GIR_.

He holds it tightly, nearly ripping the paper from his grip. Eventually he sets it back down on the table and stares at the door long enough he could have burned holes into the wood with his gaze alone. He hasn’t had any visitors today, and won’t have any more until Gaz gets off from school. The hairs on the back of his neck are raised and Dib instinctively places a hand over the skin of his neck, rubbing the nervousness out with equally shaking fingers.

He pauses, fingers trailing down to where the small cuts in his neck are, or at least, _should_ have been. Thin trails of red, all the way back from when he was trying to shove a poor slug into Zim’s mouth and the alien had gone for his neck to keep him at bay, gone. The skin there was smooth and undaunted.

Anxiety pushes him to trail down his own neck and touch his shoulders, unwrap his wrists and feel for every minor detail of injury that should have shown just how dragged in the forest he had been. The bandages around his arm come away more easily than he would have expected, as if poorly replaced, and Dib’s throat goes stricken when the ghoul’s teeth marks are no longer heavy indentations into his flesh. Instead, small, pink little marks foaming a circle surround his wrist, barely noticeable under the harsh lights, and looking as if it would heal in a mere day.

Dib re-wraps the arm and doesn’t check himself further. The day passes with boring TV and bland hospital food, Gaz visits and tells him how much she hated her math teacher. Eventually curfew hits and he decides to make sure the door to his room is locked himself. There’s a pain in his leg and chest as he moves across the room and the teenager finds the sensation oddly comforting to know that the injuries were still there.

The trauma doesn’t arise again until an hour later and Dib doesn’t cry this time, only staring blankly up at the ceiling until exhaustion takes him over.

* * *

He wakes again to the feeling of the world shaking around him, but doesn’t open his eyes. Morphine had a funny way of fucking with your brain, and his current sanity didn’t allow him to sleep for more than a few hours at a time anyways, so Dib lays still, eyes shut, and waits for the allowance of sleep to return once more.

There’s the sound of something moving, something brushing past wood and shutting something closed with a soft click noise. Dib ignores it.

A weight on the side of his bed, bringing it down as it sits and brushing up against his side, causing the mattress to squeak and his eyebrow to twitch in irritation. This is the worst time of the hour for a nurse to be checking on him, as sweet as they may be, and he really wasn’t in the mood to be woken up just to be asked if he needed help getting to the bathroom. So when a heavy hand lays on his shoulder and shakes, Dib again goes to ignore it.

When he hears the clink of his glasses being plucked off the bedside table and gently placed on his face, he tries to ignore that too.

His feigned sleep must have pissed who ever is hovering above him off, because suddenly there’s a hand gripping his face, smooshing his cheeks together like a fish and forcefully bringing snapping his eyes open as the assailant brings his head forwards.

Amber eyes wide and already beginning to wetten, Dib see’s a single red eye glowing back at him from the darkness, and a sharp tooth grin underneath it.

In a moment of sleepy confusion and fear, the cogs in his brain whir in place and Dib is quite sure that this is the vengeance of Zim coming back to kill him.

Heart racing, tears already escape from his eyes and trail down the gloves of the Invader, glaring back at him a wide, maniacal crimson eye, the other hidden by darkness with no light to shine through. The grip around his face tightens and Dib lets out a small involuntary squeak, to which the other’s grin widens at. Body frozen, breath stopped, he watches as the alien raises his other hand and awaits for whatever fate comes next.

A shaking, crinkly sound. A bunch of soft gummy worms rain down over Dib’s head.

“Eat gummy-slug and fear me, Dib-stink.” Zim says.

A moment passes, then another. Zim is still shaking out the last of the gummy-worm bag’s contents into Dib’s hair and unsuccessfully attempting to stick one up his nose when the absurdity of the situation finally processes in his brain. “I fucking hate you.”

His arms react on their own accord, lunging out to the Invader and catching the alien by a jolt, pulling him downwards until Zim’s face was unceremoniously buried into Dib’s and the teenager was sniveling for what feels like the fifth time in the hour into the other’s uniform. “I really, really fucking _hate_ you.”

He sniffs up the rest of the tears the best of he can in that moment but not without purposely wiping his snot on the alien’s clothes. Zim tenses up immediately at the action, uncomfortable and yet unmoving as he’s bent down at an awkward angle. Dib feels his teeth bare into a snarl up against his neck and almost laughs out loud at the outburst that follows with it. “You sentimental humans. None of your actions make any sense. So contradictory.” He lets out a huff of disgust.

Hesitation, then Dib feels a hand awkwardly patting his back before coming to rest on the back of his head. It rests there while the other arm finds it’s way around Dib’s torso, mindful of the injurys, and softly holds there. “Zim thinks the fall scrambled what little sense you had in that huge head of yours.”

“I thought you were dead.” Dib ignores the insult and peaks to see the lights of the Pak shining brightly on Zim’s back. “I thought you were, I don’t know, eaten or something. Lying in a ditch somewhere just…just rotting away.”

A slight tug, and the alien pulls away from his slightly, one eye squinting at him in a very Zim-like fashion. “Idiot. I cannot die. I’m _Zim_.” He speaks with a matter of fact-attitude. “Thought you’d be very happy about that.”

The hands that were wrapped in a hug around the invader fall back to cradle the aliens face, and Dib stares back into the single red eye that blinks when he speaks to it. “Uh, yeah.” He sniffs, and it comes out more like a cracking laugh. “I thought so too.”

Zim’s is staring blankly at him with the human’s hands resting on his cheeks. A pause in the room, nothing spoken, until the alien quietly snatches a gummy-worm from the teen’s collarbone and unceremoniously pokes it up against Dib’s mouth until it sticks out of his lips in a funny looking fashion. “Eat slug.”

Dib spits it out at him and snorts as it bounces off the middle of the invader’s face. God, the feeling in his chest is lighter than it has been in days, weeks even. He felt like he was floating in air and there’s a stong chance that is had nothing to do with the morphine. Zim pushes away, shaking his head in disgust and cursing in Irken, although it’s impressive he’s keeping his voice low, so as to avoid any unwanted nurses from seeing what all the ruckus was about.

A quick whir and a flash of metal, and suddenly there is light. A Pak leg extends from Zim’s back with the end transformed into a small flashlight, weak enough not to brighten the whole room but still intense enough that Dib hisses as his eyes adjust to the sudden sting. Zim snorts at the action, brushing himself off non-nonchalant, lingering in some spots where Dib had wrinkled his uniform with the hug. The alien pauses, unspoken realizations in his mind. The Pak click once and Zim busies himself with flicking the gummy worms out of Dib’s hair.

The boy doesn’t flinch at the action, instead zeroing in on the glint on the Invader’s other eye. An eye-patch, though it looks to have been bedazzled, glittery and with a large badly drawn eye on the front of it. Dib choke a laugh. It looks absolutely ridiculous. “I like your uh-” He can’t get the sentence out without snickering, so he just takes a free hand and points to his own eye.

Zim’s lip twitches before sighing. “Gir’s fault. Until I can fabricate a new eye, I’m stuck with it.”

Oh. He almost forgot. “Hey, your missing eye doesn’t have any sort of uh, Wi-Fi capability or anything like that, right?” Dib questions, continuing when the alien deadpans at him. “Like, you can’t see through it remotely?”

“If I could do that, I would have located it by now.”

Thank fuck. He doesn’t know how he’d live past the embarrassment otherwise. Zim watches him as the teenager pushes back, searching through the sheets and patting himself down until he finds what he was looking for among the mess of the bed. When he brings up the red eye, he can practically feel the Invader’s jaw drop. “Held it for you.”

It’s snatched immediately, the alien cradling his prize away from the teenager with a hiss. “You _THIEF_ -!”

“I saved it from the ghoul!” Dib half-laughs when he defends himself. The relief in his system is making him inappropriately giddy.

“You just wanted to experiment on it! Do not lie to Zim, Dib-thief, I can smell it on you!” He hisses, hunted over and lifting the eye patch. Dib gets a half-second of sight of the eye-socket before Zim tries to pop it back into place. The wires don’t connect immediately, but he lets out a little gasp as the cords move on their own accord, like magnets being attracted to each other. The ends of the cords would meet, then falls, try again before slipping away.

A couple of failed tries later and Zim is glaring at him. “You’ve done something to it! It won’t reconnect.”

“I didn’t do anything!”

Zim tries once more and lets out an outburst of frustration when it doesn’t fit. “Of course you have! You must have done something!” He pulls the eye back, rotating it with his claws and giving it a look-over. “Did you get it wet!?”

Dib’s mouth thins into a line and he suddenly looks very uncomfortable. “Uh, maybe?”

Zim snarks up at him. “Maybe?”

“I may have uh….cried on it a little bit.” Damn it. Why couldn’t he have just told him he dropped it in a water cup or something. Now Zim was just looking at him weird. Ok, new plan. Deflection. “Shouldn’t it be water-proof? It’s a freaking eye, for fucks sake. Aren’t they supposed to be, I don’t know, moist all the time?”

“Not with earthly fluids, idiot boy.” Zim’s voice trails low and he runs a clawed hand down his face. The alien’s antennae twitches in thought for a moment. Then, he thrusts out the eye to the teenager. “You will help Zim.”

Amber glances from one red eye to the next, hesitating to see if it was some sort of test before picking it back up again. “Does this mean I get permission to experiment with it?”

“You will reconnect the cords and do nothing else!”

Dib sits up straighter, wiping away the wetness on his face to find that a smile has overtaken his mouth with no signs of leaving. He motions Zim to lean forwards, to which the alien does, and peers into eye-socket. “You’re fucking insane, you know that?” The insult comes out like a chuckle. “How are you even alive? Where have you even been-?”

“Busy, Dib-stink. Earth domination stuff.” The accusation is not without a slight sass in the Invader’s voice, his antennae flicking in the teen’s direction at the end of every sentence. They lean forwards and brush against his hair as Dib carefully attaches which wire to the corresponding one. One flutters across his forehead and leaves immediately, Zim going tense all of sudden. Dib brushes it off as nervousness. He’d be pretty nervous if someone else doped up on morphine was performing eye-surgery on him too.

He’s halfway finished, being as delicate as possible when Zim growls something low. “Zim will accompany you on your investigations now.”

Dib pauses for a moment. He finishes up and leans backwards, raising a brow at the Invader as the alien pops the eye back into final place, the sphere rolling backwards and forwards again and blinking before coming to rest on the human. Zim speaks up again before Dib gets to. “No one is allowed to kill my nemesis except for me, and I cannot risk you dying before I destroy this pitiful ball of dirt. You, along with the rest of this filthy planet, are property of the Irken empire, and I refuse for your death to be stolen by a mere goo-”

“Ghoul.” Dib corrects.

“ _Ghouls_.” Zim hisses. “Or ghosts, or bigfeets, or whatever silly mythical meat bag to take that away from me. Your death is _my_ Irken right and _mine_ alone.” He points a sharp, gloved claw in Dib’s face to further emphasis his point, teeth drawn up into a half-snarl. “Your life belongs to Zim.”

Dib stares at him. Then scoffs. “Nice speech, but you’re never going to take the Earth, not while I’m still alive.”

Zim snorts at him. “I can make-do. Besides.” He raises a hand and brings down a rough slap of the hand on Dib’s casted leg, causing the teen to wince at the spike of pain that comes with it. “You’re not exactly in a position to stop me.”

Dib frowns at him, grabs a fist full of gummy-worms scattered all over the bed-sheets and throws it in the Invader’s direction. The alien half-ducks, candy hitting the opposite wall and grabbing his tossed hand, holding it in place while Dib huffed and tries tugging it away. “So you saved me just so you could kill me yourself? Do you even know how fucked up that sounds?” Dib pulls again, but he’s weak and exhausted, so it doesn’t take much for the alien to keep his hand trapped. “And do you honestly think I’m just gonna let you come with me on my investigations, especially since this last one almost fucking killed me? killed both of us?”

Zim’s eyes narrow at him. The light from the Pak casts an eerie glow on his face.

“You aliens are so contradictory.” Dib’s voice is not without sarcasm nor irony. “What are your real motives, Zim?”

Clawed fingers dig into Dib’s palm. The human flinches, glances down to where their hands are linked together and back up again. Zim’s gaze hasn’t left his face. “I don’t owe you any explanation.”

“I know you put your Pak on me.” He grits his teeth and watches the alien go tense. “I don’t know why, but I know you did. I’m not an idiot. I remember….things.” He takes a deep breathe. “Bits and pieces. I remember the fire, the fighting, the fall….and then suddenly it was like I was somewhere else? I remember dying but _not_ dying. All I know is that you need that thing to live and you put it on _me_.” The words coming out of his mouth are so absurd it takes him a minute to process himself.

Zim says nothing, so Dib shakes his head and continues. “ I don’t know what you did to me…what the _Pak_ did to me-”

“You will be silent, or I will make you.”

His words stop cold. Dib stares at Zim through the dim lighting. The alien’s face is stoic, body still and the grip on the teen’s hand in a deadlock.

Zim looks….cornered.

Trapped. Caught red-handed. Like he had done something terribly taboo, committed high treason and had no excuse for his crime. At least no excuse he was willing to admit.

Dib wrinkles his nose, opens his mouth to retort before shutting it again. It was an ungodly hour of the night, his body is already angry with him for the rude awakening and pressing himself to stay awake. His stomach was sore and a headache was drilling into the back of head with all the questions and frustration mixing around in his mind.

So he sighs, lays back down on his side and doesn’t bother to take his hand back as it’s apparently ‘Irken property’ now or whatever Zim was talking about. He plucks a gummy worm that was resting near his ear and pops it in his mouth, muttering while he chews. “Whatever you say, alien scum.” He trails off. “Your voice is still annoying.”

The alien frowns. “Zim’s voice is sexy.”

Dib peers up at him and fights back a chuckle at the expression, so he smiles instead. The alien pauses, narrowing his eyes and tilting his head.

Zim opens his mouth, face twisted in a mix of conflict and something else before shutting again. This happens twice more until he finally speaks a single sentence, uncharacteristically soft in Irken.

Dib is about to ask what it means when there’s sudden knock on the door, both boys going still before the warmth in Dib’s hand leaves and the sound of Zim practically throwing himself out of the open window, Pak legs extending and creating loud clacking noises as they clang against the glass. He drops just milliseconds before the door opens.

The nurse peeks her head through and Dib face palms as she scans the room with confusion before eyeing the lock lying useless on the floor.

* * *

A few hours later, after some much needed sleep and paying for property damage. Being the son of a well-renowned scientist had it’s perks. Small public damages were swept under the rug and no one asked any questions as to why a weakened, hospitalized boy had his metal window lock nearly torn from it’s pane, or the holes that trailed up the side of the building all the way until it hit his room on the 5th floor as long as they got paid the right amount.

The days start to pass a little quicker, and he has reoccurring company to thank for that.

Dib’s injuries were healing, a bit quicker than normal but not fast enough to cause suspicion among the doctors. He was praised for taking care of himself, that he was so lucky and a miracle case, (he knows better) and that soon enough he could be discharged and ready to continue the process at home, as long as he signed a couple papers stating he wouldn’t do anything reckless in the meantime and got a couple notes excusing him from school. He could say goodbye to PE for the rest of the year, thanks to the cast on his leg.

His father called him once, via Gaz’s phone since his own was smashed and he didn’t have the energy to repair it. His sister sat to the side and played on her game slave while his father rambled on about how important it was for Dib to take his vitamins, drink five glasses of water a day and to take his medicine at all the right times. Typical, low energy health speech you find on the back of a self-help pamphlet, but Dib quietly listens as his father speaks, tuning out most of the words until a sentence catches him off guard. “And no more paranormal adventures, son. It’s time you start focusing on real science. It’s safer, for the most part.” He doesn’t miss the joke at the end. “You don’t get mauled by bears by doing REAL science.”

Ah, so everyone was going with the bear theory then. “I’m not giving it up dad. I am doing real science, just…a different sort. Paranormal science.” He can feel his father frown from the other end of the phone. “This was just a little set back!” He hears a intake of air from the receiver and before his dad could bare the brunt of scolding upon him, Dib cuts him off. “And I have a…partner now. I won’t be alone.”

Gaz peaks one eye open at him from across the room the same time his father echos ‘A partner?’ into his ear.

“Yeah.” Dib avoids eye contact with his sister and swallows his pride. “I have a _friend_ coming along with me now.”

His father asks questions a little too quickly, but the relief in his voice is apparent. Out of the corner of his eye, he see’s Gaz eyeing the multitude of Get-Well cards starting to form their own pile near his bed-side.

She says nothing, but he knows his sister is smart enough to put two and two together.

* * *

He’s half-standing, using his bed frame as support as he struggles to button up his shirt (a difficult action, considering every move of his mid-section makes him hiss and wires were still stuck in his arms) when the door to his room slams open with enough force it almost cracks the plaster in the wall.

_“BIG HEAD!!!”_

Dib doesn’t even get a chance to scream before a feral ball of green and metal practically launches onto his face and knocks him to the ground.

A obligatory curse comes out of his mouth as pain rings through his stitches and Gir sits atop his bare chest, poking and prodding at the damaged flesh that looked a little too-suspiciously healed for someone who’s only been in the hospital for a week. Still, it hurt like a bitch and the paranormal investigator is struggling against his own instinct to sit there and wither in turn for pushing Gir off, (he is unsuccessful) and gritting his teeth to yell at whoever had the audacity to barge in without knocking. Sure, the bandages covered practically 90% of his torso and his shirt lay hanging off his shoulders, but he was technically half-naked. Rude.

Out of the corner of his eye, he catches Zim all but bolt into the room, decked out in his disguise and hoodie, a bag slung over his shoulder. The alien quickly shuts the door behind him, locking the latching into place before pressing his back to the door and scanning the room. Purple eyes fall on the robot and the teenager sprawled out on the floor and practically yells. “GIR! Get off of the Dib! He has germs.”

The robot protests with a incoherent babble of sentences, the paws of his disguise coming up to grab fistfuls of Dib’s hair, (to which the teenager bats away at) until Zim stomps over and yanks him up by the scruff of the neck, _er_ , costume, and flings him to the other side of the room. The robot giggles as he bounces off the visitor’s chair and skids to a stop beneath a newly repaired window.

There are stars in Dib’s vision and a couple of harsh words building up in his throat when a gloved hand comes down outstretched for him to take. Without thinking, he grabs it and is hoisted upwards with more strength than the human is willing to admit he finds impressive. “The fuck, Zim!” He spits, allowing the alien to help him (more like shove him) back onto sitting position on the hospital bed. “I thought they didn’t allow dogs in the hospital?”

“They think he’s a child in a costume.” Zim refutes, stepping to the side as Gir all but scrambles up the side of the bed, reaching into his mouth and pulling out a slightly wet, crinkled piece of paper. And then another, and another, until Dib’s lap is almost covered in what appears to be poorly made Get-Well cards, all of which contain some sort of doodle of either the three of them, or various foods and monsters.

“I brought you a TV!” Gir smiles widely, flops over on his back, miscalculates and falls off the side of the bed instead.

Dib picks up a piece of paper that looks like a drawing of himself with a Pak on his chest and cringes. He pushes the pile to the side. “Thanks.”

Gir is too busy drawing even more Get-Well cards, (where did he get those papers and crayons?) to answer, and Zim steps over him to sit on the side of Dib’s bed. He looks Dib up and down and frowns, the teenager suddenly self-conscious. “You’re still not well enough to fight.”

It’s more of a statement and less of a question. Dib raises a brow, pulling the covers up to his collarbone. “I almost got gutted. No one can just bounce back from that.” Zim opens his mouth and Dib is quick to cut him off. “ _Humans_ don’t just bounce back from that.”

He manages to get the last of the buttons put together when Zim scoffs. “Of course not.” He reaches over and pinches one of the wires in between his claws, holding it up for show. “Your planet’s medical facilities are primitive at best. Without my intervention, you’d be stuck here much longer and with little progress.”

Dib’s fingers pause from his shirt collar and he whips his gaze upwards. “Your _intervention_?”

Zim smirks, threading his fingers up the wire until it rested on the IV bag. “One or two Injections of Irken medicine would have healed you within hours. But your human doctors would have found that too suspicious. I had to find a way to administer it secretly, and at a pace that wouldn't raise alarm.” He flicks the bag and winks. “I made do.”

Dib gapes at him. “I don’t know whether to be creeped out or angry.”

“Be impressed, you ungrateful worm.” Zim decides for him, rummaging through the bag. “I’ll administer the rest once you’re free of this facility. But in the meantime.” He pulls out a camcorder, a rather nice one, and flips it around in his hands like a toy before holding it up for show. “Witness what Zim brought you! As uh-” He thinks for a minute. “Not-dying present.”

“Get-Well present, dumb ass.” Dib reaches out cautiously, but Zim holds it just out of reach.

“I said look at it, not hold it.” The alien holds it up in the air (though it’s upside down) and presents it like a fine prize. “Impressive, isn’t it?”

It was impressive. It looked nice. Really nice. Suspiciously nice, and _very_ expensive looking.

Dib squints at him. “Did you steal that?”

“SILENCE.” Zim thrusts a finger at him and Dib see’s his own teeth marks in the Invader’s glove. An uncomfortable memory settles in his stomach, but Zim keeps speaking. “This is for our new _adventures_ together, Dib-Stink. For your…mythical creatures and whatnot.” He waves a hand and mummers the last bit.

“Do you even know how it works?” Dib questions. He sees Gir eyeing the half-full pudding cup on his bed stand and quickly snatches back and uses the plastic spoon to feign eating. The robot whines at the sight, but Dib was not going to be responsible for whatever mess Gir made in this room. Giving him pudding was the equivalent of giving the robot ammunition. He lifts his casted leg into the air, pushing over the alien a little in the process. (Zim glares at his bare toes like it’s the most offensive thing in the world) and Gir practically scrambles up the side of the sheets to lay beside the limb.

Crayons make a horrible scrapping noise against his cast as Gir goes to town on his leg, and Saturn knows what the little robot is going to draw, but that’s a problem for a future Dib.

A small beeping sound, and he turns his attention back to Zim to find a camera lenses with a little red light blinking at him. “What.”

“Just getting a good, wholesome family memory of you looking like you were tossed into a blender before all of it disappears.” Zim snickers. “And undeniable proof that you like pudding. You can’t’ lie to Zim anymore, Dib-smelly. I have EVIDENCE!”

“That’s _my_ line.” Dib gets a little pudding on his spoon, folds it back and flicks it towards him.

The pudding is dodged fairly easily, landing somewhere on the floor behind them and Zim has a cocky smile. Dib tries again anyways, backfires and splatters a little bit over the front of his just-changed shirt and nice clean bed sheets. He doesn’t need to hear the camera lenses zooming in on the defeat on his face, the Invader’s maniacal laughter was enough. “Jerk.”

* * *

It’s another three days before he’s allowed to be discharged. Gaz picks him up in her car, snickers when he has trouble fitting his crutches into the backseats and calmly tells him that his truck has been towed and he has until the end of this week to go pick it up. Dib threatens to bleed all over her nice leather seats, and she hits him for it. Not too hard, not like she usually does, just a little slap on the back of the head, and that’s when Dib knows she’s still worried about him. So he smiles when she begrudgingly asks if he’s feeling better and deflects by asking about her weekend.

Getting up the stairs and into his room is the hardest part. Alien technological medicine or not, Dib was still stiff from laying down for nearly two weeks and the painkillers they prescribed him were probably left in Gaz’s front passenger seat. He manages to make it upstairs by himself, save for stopping every few steps to catch his breath before fumbling to open his bedroom door and locking it behind him.

Getting dressed is a bitch, but somehow he manages a pajama shirt and sweats. He throws on one of his spare trench coats for reasons, as well are sucking up the pain for socks and shoes before plopping down on his bed in all that. His stomach lurches as the mattress presses under his weight, but it’s so much nicer than the cheap ones at the hospital.

His laptop is right at the foot of his bed where he left it, and going online shows a surprising amount of messages from Swollen Eyeball. They ranged from asking for an update on the mission, to questioning emails. What little following he had on his account ranged from the troll comments, to comments noting it’s the longest since he’s last been online, to some even spouting theories of their own of Dib perhaps getting eaten by the Ghoul.

He tries not to think about it. A couple of messages send out and he shuts his laptop, curls underneath his covers and drowns out the rest of the world until 2AM.

A knock on his bedroom window. Zim arrived exactly on time.

Sitting up is a pain but he manages, unclasping and lock and swinging them open to reveal the Invader. He’s in his Voot cruiser, hovering just outside his house with the windshield down. The undisguised alien’s face is impatient and before Dib can protest, a clawed hand hooks itself on the front of his pajama shirt and all but throws him in the cruiser beside him.

Dib’s back hits the seat a bit too hard and he curls into a ball, hissing into his knees and inwardly cursing as a wave of pain travels from his mid-section down to his leg. He’s about to yell out to wait, but the Invader is already steering the ship away from his house, windshield coming down so quickly Dib has to scoot back so the glass doesn’t shut on him. “Finally! You’re even slower than usual.” He presses a couple buttons, not looking back to the groaning boy behind him. “I was worried your humongous head would have put us over the weight limit.”

Gathering himself, Dib glares at the back of the alien’s head. “My crutches are still left back in my room!”

The invader waves a gloved hand, not looking away from the coordinates. “Details, details. Primitive pieces of wood.” A click, a metal Pak leg slides out and anchors towards him so quickly that Dib flinches. A second passes, amber eyes peak open to find it just hovering there. “Use this. You won’t need those things much longer anyway.”

The teenager huffs at him, but takes the guidance anyway. The metal leg hoists him up into sitting position and then pulls him by his own grip until the alien and human are sitting shoulder to shoulder. Dib raises a brow at the action, but Zim’s is keen on keeping his gaze focused on the controls. “So.” The teenager starts off, tracing the colors across the dashboard with his finger. “Wanna check out the forest after I’m all good to go?”

Zim’s head whips around to glare at him so quickly his antennae almost slap Dib across the face. “You mean the forest you almost got gutted in?”

“Uh. Yep.”

“ _Why_ on IRK would you want to go back there?”

The response given is a near-sheepish shrug. “I don’t know. See if my stuff is still there? I know it’s been a minute but you never know. Maybe we can find the remains of that ghoul-” Zim starts to groan and Dib has to speak a little louder to be heard over the frustration. “-for evidence? I don’t have anything to post on the forums and I want _something_ to show from it.” He gestures to his midsection. “I’m not even gonna be able to keep the scars from it.”

“You are never satisfied, are you?” Zim shakes his head.

“C’mon. Just for a few minutes.”

“There is nothing there to scavenge. I made _sure_ of that.” The alien refutes. The Voot cruiser has come to pause over the city, lights shining from underneath them as stars float above them. Zim swivels his body to look at Dib fully, (the human had a stupid grin, curse him) and crosses his arms. “I destroyed everything in that area, just like I’ll do to the rest of your pitiful planet. If fire hasn’t erased the corpse, the maggots would have by now. Zim didn’t exactly leave…much…” The Invader trails off.

“Just for a few minutes.” Dib nudges the Invader and ignores the venomous look given to him in return. “Maybe we can find other ghouls in the area, if any survived, I mean.”

Red eyes stare at him, then Zim belts out a single, horrible laugh. “You are just begging to be eaten alive! What makes you think you could survive another encounter with those things?” He laughs and it’s a shrill, mocking noise. “The state of your health means nothing if you have no weapon!”

Dib goes quiet for a heartbeat. “I have you.”

The laughter stops abruptly, Zim’s head whipping back down to glare at the injured human who offers nothing more than a shrug to the comment. “Hilarious, Dib. But Zim is no mere tool.” A gloved fist slams down onto the control panel, raising his fist to shake in intensity. “Zim is a being of mass destruction that no other can compare to, your soon-to-be overlord and master, the future conquer of your world and everything you know and love! NOTHING CAN STAND IN ZIM’S WAY!”

The human’s shoulder clunks against his Pak and slouches in his seat. “So I have nothing to worry about, then?”

The alien pauses in his theatrics to glare at him. “I will _destroy_ you.”

Dib sticks out his tongue at him.

Zim’s eye twitches. “We will inspect the forest for any remaining hostile lifeforms and eradicate them if necessary after you have been healed.” He turns back to the control panel and the Voot starts moving again. “Then I’ll enact my next plan for this disgusting filth ball of a planet.”

**Author's Note:**

> I have a tumblr where there's art on this btw ;) https://bamsara.tumblr.com/

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Witness](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23402224) by [sethera](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sethera/pseuds/sethera)




End file.
